The Castle Doctrine Forums

arakira:

There are some speed control keys in the game that can be turned on.  Look for settings/enableSpeedControlKeys.ini and set that to 1.

After that, you can control game frame rate with these keys:

^   Slow 2 FPS
&   Normal 60 FPS
*    120 FPS
(    240 FPS
)    480 FPS

Essentially, SHIFT plus the keys 6 through 0 becomes a row of speed control keys like on a tape deck.  It effects the whole game (but also works if you're watching a recording).

Of course, you computer might not actually be able to do 480 FPS... in that case, it will simply run as fast as possible.

Also, on my machines, higher frame rates become possible if I move the window most of the way off the edge of the screen (so that the whole thing doesn't need to be redrawn by the graphics card).  You can leave the top-left corner visible so that you can watch the playback percentage display.

That helps me watch longer game recordings and "get to the good part" faster.

Okay, check out v27, just released.

It allows stuff to be seen around corners, so there's absolutely no pop in as you move around... but, if something's really behind a wall or door, it's invisible.

Whoa!  Arakira, I've never seen this before, and the recent changes shouldn't have caused it.  I just tried v26, and I can't reproduce this behavior.

Can you send me a recordedGame file that shows it happening?  You can check which file is the right one by dropping them in playbackGame and launching the game to watch them.

If you find the recordedGame, send to:  jasonrohrer@fastmail.fm

Yeah, on brighter monitors, it kinda gives the game a spookier feel....

What's around that corner?  Looks like nothing, but then step forward and something scary might fade into view.

Yeah, I get why you would want those highlights there.... hmm...

But the problem with highlighting "empty floor" spots where something is removed is that it gives you no information about how to "correct" that to make the change highlight go away.  Like, you remove a concrete wall, so there's a green-highlighted empty floor there now... and then later, you're trying to put it back the way that it was... so you have to remember what was there anyway!

The same is true of the other highlights (like, if you replace wood with concrete, there's a highlight there, and it doesn't tell you how to revert it).  But since highlights only symbolize "money spent" and not necessarily "all changes", you can easily "fix" that highlight by simply removing the concrete (and thus not spending that money).

So, there is a certain logic to the way that it works.  It also symbolizes exactly how the server is going to bill you for what it bills you for (it computes the exact same "new placements" diff and bills you just for that).

So... a suggestion for you:  why not put an innocuous place-holder object (like... maybe indicator lights) in the place of the stuff that you remove, to remind yourself where you need to put a wall (or door) back later?

It will be diff-highlighted for you, to remind you to put the real object back later.  And you have two different colors of lights to work with (for two different "notes to self" that you might leave... like, orange to make holes in walls, and green to temporarily remove doors).

I'm sure you're already doing this with chihuahuas as placeholders for pitbulls when testing....

Thanks for the input here Lithium.

The rich players are already, generally, de-motivated from picking on little folks, because they have a lot to lose if they make a mistake, and stealing your $250 just isn't worth it.  If you did lure one of them in, and manage to kill one, you'd likely earn a huge bounty.

I'm guessing that the people doing this to you are more low-level.  Maybe even someone starting a fresh life and spending all $2000 on tools, just on a lark.

Anyway, if you find a tape where it looks like someone did this to you, send me an email with the full name of the robber:  jasonrohrer@fastmail.fm

Then, I can look in the server logs and tell you the whole story about where this person came from, how they afforded the tools, and what they did after robbing you.

As far as strategy, everyone starts at 0, and eventually dies (or is robbed blind) and goes back to 0 again.  Even the rich are vulnerable, and no one is rich forever in this game.  Yes, some of them have "figured stuff out" in terms of advanced building tricks and so on...

Really, the name of the game, strategy-wise, is to build a house that somehow tricks people.  Maybe it looks like an easy house... but has some deadly trick to it.  "Trick" doesn't actually cost very much money to construct, and rich people don't have that much of an advantage when it comes to tricks.

Okay, I finally solved this problem.

The way v26 works is that non-visible tiles fade out to fully transparent.  If the game thinks you can't see it, and it can't see you (i.e., it won't react to your presence or start chasing you), then you actually can't see it on the screen, no matter what you do to your gamma.

One exception is made for "connected" tiles that you could infer anyway from visible tiles on the edge of the shroud.  This ensures visual consistency of interconnecting walls and wires and prevents a wall or wire from looking "cut off" as it goes into the shroud.  This gives you no additional information about what's back there, because the part of the wall/wire that you can see (like, the top bar of a wall T junction) clearly tells you that the | bar of the T is back there in the shroud.  If you ramp up your gamma, you can indeed see the tip of the | bar under the shroud, but so what?

Anyway, the upshot is that one wall thickness is all that's needed to truly hide things, even the vault, and you can no longer see what's behind a door before opening it.  This is a vast improvement to the game.

And in terms of pop-out, visible objects that become obscured after you (or they) move fade out slowly into the shroud.... into the mystic chords of memory.  So, with your gamma ramped, you might be able to see them a bit longer than other people, but they still fade completely in a few seconds.

Old:

Old gamma ramped up:

New:

New gamma ramped up:

Note that the New image there is taken on exactly the same map.  Note the wooden T junction visible under the shroud, but the invisible vault and concrete T junction.  Because the concrete wall is not connected to the wooden wall, it can be faded out with no visual inconsistency (and seeing that part of the wooden wall doesn't tell you that the concrete wall is back there).

I thought a LOT about fake vaults way back in the beginning, before coding the game.

It seemed like an awesome idea at first.  But then I realized that people would have 100s of fake vaults installed in their houses, and it would turn the whole thing into a guessing game (minesweeper?) which isn't that interesting.

Yes, you could limit it to just one fake vault, but... nothing else in the game is limited in that way.  Anyway, people can already build guessing-game type things if they want.

Two are enough in v25, yes.

I agree that this is an issue, still.  In fact, it may have gotten a bit worse in v25, because before, EVERYONE could see past a 1-thick wall.  Now, that the shadows are darker, you really have to ramp your gamma to see what's back there.  So, where before, people were only ramping to see the furthest reaches (past 2-thick walls), now the most basic advantage (seeing behind a single wall) can only be had by the experts.

Some options:

1)  Simply skip drawing stuff that's not supposed to be visible.  Problem:  stuff will visually "pop" into existence when it becomes visible (under the shifting shroud, some dog will pop in).  Better, maybe:  fade stuff that is visible in and out to match the shroud's changes.  Shroud moves, dogs fade in.

2)  Draw a hard black "wall" behind vision-blocking things that fully covers what's back there.  Problem:  these black boxes are ugly and will also pop in and out as the vision changes.

3)  Tighten up the edge of the shroud to hide what's back there with the shroud itself.  Problem:  shroud is actually implemented as a low-res pixel map, which requires a lot of blurring to make it look fluid and non-blocky.  A tight edge isn't possible... well, actually, let me look into that (I could up the resolution of the pixel map and see what happens).

Yeah, thematically, the club is too slow, and you don't dare attempt it.... or something!

But it's mostly a mechanical thing:  to make the club weaker than the gun.

Yeah... you bring up a good point.

"Some people have nothing to lose" while "Others have a lot to lose" is a really important emergent dynamic in this game that nicely parallels the real-life dynamics of perpetrator/victim/fear.

The suicide runners are really just young kids with a death wish.  I was one of those young kids once.  I no longer am.

So, the strange part isn't the death wish... but the family hanging around in the background.

It almost feels like you shouldn't get a family until you've been alive for a while.... that would make a lot of sense.  Though as I think about how this could work (like, a wife shows up first, and then each kid, one by one), I really don't want to get into a family-growth sim... at all.

SO... probably best to just leave that dissonance in there.  You start the game as a family man each time.  That's what the game is about.  Sometimes, you don't feel like behaving like a good family man.  But that's all you.  Each family is unique and somewhat worth protecting.

Also, as a suicide runner who gets lucky with a score, coming home to a dead, defenseless wife is justice served.

Whoa!  This is a HUGE idea....

After all, in real life, you break in not really knowing what might be in the house that's worth stealing.

Still, I wonder about "blind" sorting like you're suggesting.  Maybe sorting by number of deaths or something else?  Also, if the value isn't shown, why should the other stats (attempts/deaths) be shown?  It would be pretty cool to just have a list of names with no stats at all.

And it seems like there should be some way to "discover" that a house has a lot of money in it.  You know... like the way rumors of hidden wealth lead to robberies (at least in the movies).  So... maybe upon scouting, if you get close enough to the vault, you can mouse over for a value estimate?  Well, but that would mean the value estimate would need to be in the protocol for the house check out, which means that people would just sniff the protocol to get that value without ever nearing the vault.

Hmm... actually, rumors could spread about a robber who has been successful in a bunch of houses.  "Mr. Stevens just robbed 5 people this afternoon... I bet his vault is loaded".  But it could be set so that you never know for sure.

Anyway, this would be a MAJOR change to the climate and strategy of the game.... and it's kind of late to be making major changes like that.  I mean... we've been robbing houses based on their estimated value for 10 months now, and a bunch of aspects of the game are built around that (like leaving some money in your house to attract robbers for their bounty).

Thoughts?