The Castle Doctrine Forums

According to this page, yes.

We talked about this before: http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … php?id=290

I suggested removing blueprints (for some houses) and, ideally, switching to a system where you pinged the server on each turn. That's the only way to do what you're describing. Instead of just submitting your moves once done with a robbery, you'd have to do an HTTP request for every single move... potentially hundreds of requests. Then the server has to load your map into memory (or keep it there the whole robbery) and process  a single turn. Not only is this a huge amount of overhead, but it actually might introduce a little bit of lag. In most games you can do some sort of approximation while waiting for the server response, but here when you move into a new tile, you have to wait for the server to know what you're going to see.

I'd really like to see that stuff implemented because I think blueprints are central to the future of this game, but it's no small change.

Here's a crazy idea: what if infinite pets could occupy the same space?

Right now, the main difficulty in reasoning about pets is figuring out what happens why they fight for the same space. If they could occupy the same space, they would instead go right through each other and the problem becomes parallelized. Each pet can be analyzed independently and that's a lot simpler. You would change from emulating the code in your head step by step to thinking about puzzles in a more intuitive way, one object at a time. Also, this fixes the stuttering movement with dogs for free.

The reason it's a crazy idea is that it nullifies large packs of dogs, since all dogs in an open space would converge on the same space over time (if you need to get past that space though, you'll still need a large number of clubs). But it might be worth it if the conceptual issues here are really important to fix.

I've thought about this quite a bit. It would be simple to implement, but I dont think that's enough reason to do it. My tl;dr arguments against:

• It would be at odds with the no player customization aspect (i.e. victims could be anyone). This isn't a typical MMO.

• The game is based somewhat on personal experience.

• Sadly, the vast majority of violent crimes and property crimes are committed by men. Something like 90% in 1991.

I actually think the spouse always being female and not, say, a random gender is more problematic.

Interesting. I've described it as a roguelike, but I figured it ended up being one by accident. Do you play modern roguelikes, Jason?

I always thought this mechanic was somewhat arbitrary. I see how this emerged out of other constraints, but step back for a minute: does it make sense to allow walls to repair themselves magically upon unsuccessful robberies but not on successful robberies/murders? I'm not saying get rid of the no-safe>no-damage mechanic, but is there any reason to be attached to its corollaries?

I think you explained the kids things before: simply for emotional/irrational reasons.

I wasn't clear on that! I meant the damaged map would have cumulative damage. Again, the robbers start with a fresh house, but they might damage different things. The resulting damage would function the same as it does now (all accumulated upon robbery/murder), but the other changes I mentioned (continued salary) may make it even worse... that's good, right? Your house would be like a treasure filled crypt... looted over and over again, graffitied, worn down to a shadow of the original. This might be brutal, but the extremely hard to solve house can still avoid damage altogether.

You could do it where each security tape starts with the original house (this makes less sense) or starts with the correct damage, but that takes more space.

As for the tapes, I'd hate for the game interactiveness to be limited by something like storage constraints. If need be, perhaps just store the last ~10 tapes? That's realistic, right? You can only store so much footage after all. I'd be happy with text entries for the missing ones.

And a technical question: how much space do the tapes take up? The way I'm imagining it, you should be able to store 4 moves in a byte. Tool use would be appended and would be negligible. So a ridiculous 4000 moves (circling the perimeter over 30 times) would only take up about 1kb.

Just those changes would help immensely, but one-time robbable houses would still be a limiting factor.

I don't see that being solved by more players, since then there will simply be more robbers.

But you know, your idea is quite interesting. It would solve the problem that has been mentioned where everyone wants to rob a bunch of houses, but only provides a single house for others to rob. I'm not sure how those NPC houses would be generated though. Besides, it removes a fundamental part of the game in which you can only move up in the game (ignoring salary) by doing real damage to other human beings.

Still, the idea of providing more than 1 house to rob per person is attractive.

I have another idea on how to accomplish that: maintain all houses as robbable (and lucrative) targets. Instead of logging in to about 10 puzzles to solve, all of which are of course the most mind bogglingly houses left, you would get the full interaction of an MMO... thousands of puzzles. It would require a few small changes:

• Reset each house every time no matter what, so there are no longer one-time robbable houses.

• Continue to grant a salary to robbed houses.

• Limit each robber to one successful robbery of each house, at least until the owner has updated it.

To keep the return home shocking for the owner, perhaps maintain a separate map that catalogs any permanent damage. However, the robbers see the original and solvable house each time (the only exception being family deaths). You may think it's weird that the owner sees a damaged house, while the robber sees the original. But it's no weirder or more arbitrary than non-permanent damage to a house: I blow up 8 walls of a house, leave, and the walls magically repair themselves.

There's the issue of house grinding, but the key here is you can't rob the same house over.

Players are still victimized... potentially many times in between play sessions!

To me, this knocks out a number of issues: not enough to do in the game, no viable targets for new players, and one-time robbable houses.

Close. It belonged to jere. You know, I did have that coming. I was destined to lose everything at your hands.

You had a pretty complex little cat/dog system there. But, importantly, the area of the vital components was very small. So I recreated it and solved it quickly. I noticed you had posted just 10 minutes before that about your 2 'Sky' paintings, so I asked you if you were sure you owned them.

The funny part is, after robbing you, I was still left with that trap design and I thought I'd just reuse it as is. The rest of the house was a lot simpler as you said. Thus, the part I stole became a crutch. I KNEW that it was a liability... that if you ever came in, you'd probably rob me clean.

It's like I keep saying. This is an MMO where you can't make friends, but you can make enemies.

It makes the game incredibly intense. I can feel my heart pumping every time I do it.

I think the key to learning the game is to be OK with dying a lot until you get the hang of things. It's somewhat counterproductive to get emotionally invested in your first fews house. If you don't understand how something works, create a little test to figure it out; be willing to die to figure it out. Restarting and getting a fresh $6k is the easiest thing to do in the game.

Jason Rhorer is the Banksy of our times.

Ok, fair enough. Clearly, running the whole thing server side is too costly.

Let me make one more comment and then I'll leave it alone. Ideally, we'd have zero cheating. But I think it's still worth having mazes/tension/trickery/information asymmetry even if there's the possibility of cheating using the current client simulation system. Here's why.

Cheaters would have it no easier than it already is. Honest players get the upside of mazes/tension/trickery/information asymmetry and new players get, unless cheaters are really rampant, some solace in being able to get by for a while with simpler houses. That first part is there regardless of cheaters. Even in the worst case, new players would simply be up against cheaters that would have as much knowledge as they do with the current build.

See, that can't be considering "ruining" unless ruining also describes the current state of the game.

The only real downside I can see is if the false sense of security drives some players to build mazes that cheaters could instantly beat. But I'm not convinced they're not already building houses that can instantly be beat with blueprints (that's my concern here anyway ... we're not all blips, zeds, or ukukos).

There's also the nagging thought that cheaters have an unfair advantage. Maybe we shouldn't be bothered by this though. For one, you'd only be able to use this tactic on low value houses anyway. Also, cheating doesn't help you defend that money any better. So what if you spend all day stealing a bunch of money? You're going to be departed from that money rather quickly unless you play the defensive game legitimately. All you've done is make the game less interesting for yourself; you won't have anything to show for it. So all that makes me question the motivation behind cheating. Getting rid of the low hanging fruit (i.e. protocol print out) might be enough to dissuade most.

It's not necessary, but there's an interesting question about how to deal with cheaters if and when they do arise. I'm going to ramble about this idea I had even though I'm fairly sure it's doomed (feel free to ignore): honeypots. If a player thinks they see a cheater on a security tape, they could flag the robber. If flagged X times, a special honeypot house is shown only on the robber's queue. The honeypots would all be extremely complicated mazes or guessing games. A successful robbery on the first attempt, especially without using items would be a strong indicator of cheating. The fun part would be generating them randomly, Rogue style.

That would be great. The most important part for me was realizing suicide was viable and getting comfortable with dying. Before that I kept thinking "how am I going to figure all this out without testing it?"

Yes, this drives me crazy when I'm playing multiplayer games with experienced friends. To be fair though, a lot of modern online games have fairly sophisticated matchmaking systems. So you are usually paired up with players close to your skill level.

What I mean is that defending your house for any considerable length of time is hopeless without expert level play (e.g. an understanding of of electronic memory).

Good point! I hadn't considered this because it's been so long since I was at that stage.

But you could make a house that's impossible (without blueprints) for fairly cheap. And you could make a costly maze. The safe value is driven by how hard the house is to beat over time, which I think is the proper way to do it.

There!

It's not about the money. It's about sending a message.

That was pretty damn difficult though. I almost gave up several times. And I can't claim to have understood most of the wiring. It was a lot of trial and error.