The Castle Doctrine Forums

Count the number of steps the player and the pitbull have to take to reach the fork. Since the player can reach it first after seeing the pitbull, they can still get away.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

http://castledraft.com/editor/cK8JaI

I'm retiring this house. Have a look.

http://castledraft.com/editor/qPVRLJ

One of my old houses had something almost exactly like that, lights!

http://castledraft.com/editor/Y3LOlo

In the bottom left you need to step onto the shotgun once you pass the commit gate to make the cat go up and hit the rotary switch or you need to brick the switch yourself. Otherwise you need a ladder to cross the trapdoor. (To be safe, though, you need a ladder to cross it anyway, since that trapdoor is a cut trap)

Sure. N is arbitrary, to an extent. It's a meaningful number, though, and eliminating substeps entirely is just another way of choosing an N. Here are some things to consider regarding the choice.

N=1:
Propagation delay is a full robber turn. Electronics move in slow motion; this means that all logic now has a noticeable warm up period before taking effect. Timing-based traps become super easy to construct. Hit this button and 4 turns later that trapdoor closes for exactly one turn and never opens again. Pretty much all existing circuits no longer work; to be replaced by the new paradigm. Circuits are now super easy to debug; just hook up indicator lights everywhere.

N is small (say.. 4 to 8):
Most circuits appear to update instantly. Realistic. Delay based traps are accessible, but have a noticeable space cost. Clocks that measure robber turns are accessible, but larger than in the current build. The behavior of most existing circuits is preserved; exceptions include: things that relied on the loop detection state collapse (pulse generator), and oscillators with a period relatively prime to N. If N is even, the "paradox circuit" cut detection trick works the same way it did before.

N is large (32 or so):
Most circuits appear to update instantly. Delay based traps are huge. Only a few people will bother with them. A clock that measures a robber turn takes up 4 rows of your house. The behavior of most existing circuits is preserved (with the same exceptions).

The electronics model within each turn makes perfect sense. It gets weird when you try to run the electronics "forever" before advancing the turn. As a way to not have any delay for switch (de)activation?

But the switches do have a delay. Just like real switches. And that lets us build real circuits out of them, which is pretty awesome. But waiting for a loop at all is an unnatural mechanic that makes the behavior diverge from real circuits.

If there was no loop detection and everything was simulated for N steps per turn (and took on the final state), then all the electronics would make perfect sense and wireless magic would be impossible.

32 sounds like it will make the receiver very fat. I'm not sure exactly how big I'd need to make something to make it wait out 32 cycles. Probably too big to be practical.

Also, while I have your attention... What's the deal with the single orientation map tiles? (voltage triggered switch, voltage triggered inverted switch) They make all the electronics huge. Was that the idea?

This mindset is a trap. It's based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the game.

Well engineered traps have little to no chance of being "outsmarted". Because they kill the robber with parts that he can't see. Your house not meant to be accessed the same way you access it; you have a huge information advantage over robbers and if you're abusing it they have no hope at approaching it without tools. Give up on having people "solve" a house like a puzzle unless you decide to deliberately build a very weak house.

Each segment of your house is meant to be bypassed with tools (when the robber does it) or with information (when you do it). The existence of your route to the vault is a hint for the robbers about what tool to use where. It had better not be enough of a hint that they don't need to use tools.

Once you have come to accept that, you will start seeing deathtraps from a new angle; every trap has three natural solutions. The perfect information solution, the way you reach your vault. The optimal dismantling solution, where the robber uses tools to learn all the components of the trap and can then copy your entry on subsequent trips (in a poorly designed house this often costs 0 tools). The optimal bypassing solution, where the robber uses tools to avoid needing to learn about the trap at all.

When designing your traps, you should be considering all three solutions. The perfect information solution, in this game, is only special in that you need to know what it is to design a house. Just because you ignore the other solutions doesn't mean they don't exist. It only leaves your house vulnerable to "brute forcing" with under $10k buy value (that's only $5k sell value!) of tools. It doesn't even deserve the brute force label at that point if you're trying to protect $20k.

PM me. I'm headed down this road anyway [=

*edit. Oh. I found it. That so cray.

Are you sure the step limit is 32? Because I don't think this one should work, but it tested fine.

http://castledraft.com/editor/xFNr6s

I think this should also be sufficient:

http://castledraft.com/editor/m49oKq

Since 2, 3, and 5 are prime, those three oscillators have a collective period of 30. If something that takes 3 steps to resolve happens at the beginning of the turn it should be enough to go over the limit. Of course, that button only exceeds the limit on the turn that it's pressed .

Holy crap it actually does it. Wireless transfer. Here's the test house I used:

http://castledraft.com/editor/ONscDF

Panda, if you brick the windows the dogs will run into the pit. Use 1 pit and 1 panic button.

ex: http://castledraft.com/editor/pWNNJc

That way they at least have to saw or wirecut something.