Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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The money-dumping into a second account is obviously a potential issue.
Still, it's no sure-thing (because other people can grab it too). With a small player base, it is more of a sure-thing, of course. But I'm more thinking about how this scales to a larger group of players (that's the whole point of the anonymous names---that only works in a larger group of players).
There's a related issue of "free money" sitting in a house where the player has started a new life and goes out scouting. There's a disincentive against this, though, because if your scouting pays off, you may return home to no money and a dead wife. So, I think it pretty much handles itself.
I go back and forth about this issue of "free money" at the start of each life, with nothing to lose by blowing it one way or another. On the one hand, it is healthy for the game to have a steady flow of players with nothing to lose. On the other hand, it's open to all kinds of abuse and exploitation.
Ludi, your story about communicating with the other players is really cool!
Yes, you still earn after being robbed.
This is to keep your house in circulation as long as it is still potentially interesting to a robber. A house that is one-time robbable is certainly still potentially interesting. So, money builds up there.
The goal is to automatically remove houses that are not interesting in any way (houses with a clear-cut path to the vault that everyone can use, etc.)
One thought: maybe you should only earn vault money if there is vault money in there. So, a house would still earn money after being robbed, but only in the form of wife-salary if the wife is still living.
But that would take wifeless one-time-robbable houses out of circulation immediately, which wouldn't be good.
Yeah, that was you, Ludicrosity!
And, you came back in between, and fled the robbery without reaching the vault, to ensure that it wasn't taken off the list. The current server doesn't remove a house from the list unless it has been vault-reached twice in a row, with no non-reach in between. So, because you never reached the vault twice in a row, you could keep doing it repeatedly.
I responded to this affected player separately by email.
But yes, this is a huge problem.
Vault reaches save damage (so that the owner returns home to find damage leading to the vault). Once a vault becomes "easy to reach," though, saving damage over and over, from people who are not doing damage in order to reach the vault, is problematic.
There's no obvious way for the server to distinguish between the two, though.
The "two vault reaches in a row" was supposed to handle it, but it clearly doesn't.
Also, I don't want to take a house off the list immediately after the first vault reach (because it could be a one-time-robbable house, and still be interesting for someone else to rob).
Also, I found an interesting situation the other day: there was a house that looked hard to rob, and generally scared people away, but I had figured out the tool-free secret to the house (after using tools on the house one time for safety). After that, I could milk salary from the house, because I could count on someone getting scared away in between to prevent the house from being taken off the list.
The real problem here is the exploitation of "at home suicide" for vandalism or any other purpose. Even if you're using it to legitimately explore a house that you're trying to rob (by cutting a bunch of walls each time, looking for the vault), that's not really how the game is supposed to be played. Tools used for scouting are supposed to be PRECIOUS. But when you can get $2000 for free, over and over, by killing yourself at home....
I'm also looking for a solution that doesn't worsen the game for people who are not actually exploiting this. You know, if suicide has a high penalty, then it unfairly hurts someone who needs to suicide for a good reason. Or if each new life starts with less money, then it hurts someone who legitimately dies a few times in a row.
Also, it can't just be tied to suicide.... you could just go into a top house that you don't care about and die there, accepting the chill, as long as you can keep hammering what ever house you care about.
Limiting your fresh-life load-out has been suggested, but I don't want to limit that either (it's good that you have the choice to be either a robber or a home builder at the start of a new life).
Death (of any kind) leaves a chill on any house that you've been in during your last life? Or leaves a chill on any house you've been in during the last hour?
Well, since people are discussing it here...
The idea is to announce it a week before it starts, to let new players join the game and learn how to play by practicing on the regular server. Then after that week, the permadeath server would start up as an alternative server, and it would run for one week.
This would make it more fair for new players.
Oh, I thought you meant real money...
My guess is the owner of a house gets the money from a victim they killed?
You mean real money?
Oh, is it the tape where Leon J. Baca gets you?
Yeah, he kills one of your kids right at the start, and then your wife runs to the side of her dying child. That's the way the game is supposed to work (and why you can't just leave your kids out in the open while only protecting your wife).
Glad you're back, and happy to hear this positive reaction.
The point of the new animal movement wasn't to "eliminate" magic dances. It was to make them more transparent.
Even in the worst case posted here, that chihuahua can at least be seen, and you know that he must be the key to opening those trapdoors, and you know where he's going (up and down) to do that.
Yes, there is other stuff to bypass later in this house, but if you bring in the 9 ladders, you can study that fist chunk in isolation for that price, and figure it out. Then you can bypass it with no tools next time, and scout the next chunk freely. Maybe you'll need ladders for that too, in which case you'll bring those.
You might need 27 ladders total in this process, just like you would have in a v11 house with a single row of trapdoors 27 long. But in this case, the experience of solving it is much richer.
Pressure Pad Design:
This http://castlefortify.com/c/197610a is an impossible design without pressure pads, as back-tracking a row of buttons is involved.
I can see this type of element added to a house for certain ascetic reasons as well, and not only that, if you add in a timer/ pit somewhere then this can be pretty valid trap to traverse when you might be so cocky that you get in too far and then cant escape.
Okay, I see. So trapdoors can close right as you step on them, and then open right as you get off of them. That does look pretty cool!
Though, I guess I'm still pretty hesitant to add something like this, given all the "big picture" parts of the game that are in flux. For now, I've added this to my "someday" feature list. I'll likely add this once the other aspects of the game settle down.
Yeah, it shouldn't have crashed like that, even if running in the old folder.
I found and fixed this bug today. Thanks for reporting it!
Got something big in the works. Announcing it next week.
Oh, yeah, good point! Electric floor (as crucial part of wiring) in front of a window (to keep the animal away from the electric floor) is a nice combo to protect the animal back there, assuming the animal is out of reach for a brick. But even if you get back there, you've already cut off power to the trap, so you're stuck (you can still study what's back there, but even if it's just buttons, you can't trigger then all yourself and then come out and get to the vault).
Thus, it's not true that a "$2 brick can bypass any trap". Also, there's the idea of pit in front of a window.
My example above should replace the cat with a dog, and add another window to prevent the dog from running up the "viewing hallway" and getting stuck. I built a nice trap like this today with the starting budget. Cut any wires, and lock yourself out of the vault. But then I died foolishly in someone else's house. Must carry drugged meat at all times.
PLEASE get it to crash like this, and then quit and send me your latest recordedGame file.
I'm sure there's a bug somewhere that is causing this (your house might be corrupted or something), and seeing that recordedGame file will help me find it.
Or, if you haven't played since it last crashed, just send me the last recordedGame file that you have:
jasonrohrer@fastmail.fm
Well, this is all sounding pretty good.
Something I've always found interesting---but seen very little use---are wired walls as cut detectors. If the power that holds the trap doors open leading to your vault is routed through a long wall that protects other parts of your security, you can't cut the wall without blocking your access to the vault.
Obviously, cut walls can be used to trigger other things as well (releasing dogs, etc.)
Would it be interesting (and maybe overpowered) if there were wired windows that functioned the same way? Overpowered, because a "cut this window and die in the trapdoor you're standing on" would become an obvious combo...
Also, doesn't something like this work to "protect" the cat behind the window?
http://castlefortify.com/c/177a65b
Cat is out-of-reach for a brick, but still visible. Obviously, that magic dance doesn't work without longer hallways.... just trying to give the idea of hidden buttons that the cat would run to.
Can you mock up a mini design in CastleFortify that shows this?
Why do you want an electric floor to turn off when the robber is next to it?
From the point of view of the robber, it is not very interesting to dance around in front of 20-thick concrete and metal walls while invisible animals do who-knows-what back there.
Thus, such a setup isn't really a "trap," because anyone with enough sense will steer clear until they save up enough explosives to cut through the concrete shell and bypass the thing. And as a bypassable thing, it's not very interesting, because there's no information about WHERE you should try cutting first.
If your concrete shell is forced to have a weakness, on the other hand, it's more interesting to both work through (using the information you can see through the window) or cut through (by treating the window as a weak entry point into the guts of the thing).
In terms of some trap being bypassed by a $2 brick, well, what if you can't walk back there safely without killing or trapping yourself?
Yes, it is hard to build something really secure for $2000, but that's intentional. You can work your way up to better security over time.
Many versions ago (before blueprints), it was possible to build an uncrackable security system (through a combination of electric floors and hidden animal movements) for only $1400. If you can do that, and so can everyone else, then what's the point of playing? Everyone builds a house that cannot be broken, and then the game ends.
After all, this is a game about being forever vulnerable. Even the richest, most powerful player should fall eventually.
I hope you'll give the game another try, and stick around to see where it goes from here.
Yeah, it only sees you when you see it . If it's off-screen, it can't see you, even if you technically have a line of sight to it down a long hallway.
It's a little ambiguous around corners, because the visibility fog has a soft edge. But essentially, if you can see the animal relatively clearly (like, it is more that 50% past the "edge" of the fog), then it will start moving.
This release changes animal behavior so that they do not start moving until they have seen you. After that, they switch to their normal following or fleeing behavior, even if they can no longer see you. Thus, they can still follow you from behind walls, but only after they have seen you.
This is a tiny change, but the impact on house design is huge, because animals can no longer move mysteriously and invisibly behind walls to trigger switches. They must be visible at least once to the robber before they can start doing this.
As a result, all houses have been taken out of circulation until their owners re-edit them to work with the new behavior.
Yeah, that's one example... it kindof replaces the electric floor / trapdoor combo. I do like that combo, though!
And it's really cool when combos can create functionality that is not present at all in individual items.
You know, I'm trying to give you atoms so that you can build your own molecules.
I'm looking for evidence that a pressure plate really is an atom that can be used to build molecules that are different from what's possible now.
Okay, this is in place now (your pay report is cleared, or portions of it are cleared, when you are fully or partially robbed).
Oh, sorry, I was mistaken about how that part of the engine works. Long ago, stuff used to be only triggered by the presence of a mobile (not the absence), but that changed at some point to let an animal block a door that's trying to close (and then allow the door to finish closing after the animal leaves).
So, there are both "mobile" and "noMobile" trigger conditions now.
I was thinking back to the days when I was implementing switches, and there wasn't a "noMobile" trigger condition back then.
Anyway, yes it is possible, and not hard. However, I'm still wondering how useful and interesting they would be.... You know, given that nothing happens in this game when you're not moving, so it's not like anything is happening while you're standing on a pressure plate. It's only interesting if something happens exactly as you step on or off, in those two moves. I'm trying to avoid a lot of duplicate functionality in the house objects (keep it simple, avoid "kitchen sink" design style).
SO....
Can you demonstrate (via Castle Fortify.... just use a light in place of a pressure plate or something) an interesting mini-design that uses pressure plates but would NOT be possible to emulate without them? (You know, two dogs walking behind each other turn a regular switch into the same behavior as a pressure plate, right?)
Maybe something where every time you hit the plate, a "dog dispenser" lets one more dog out? I dunno...
Umm... yeah, I'm supposed to be doing that already.
But I don't want to annoy *everyone* with minor versions that are still really in progress.... so I always put it off until the time feels right, and it's been a long time since I sent one out (everything has been so in flux for so long, it always seems like the game is *almost ready* to bring 3800 people back into.... but not yet).
There's a way to "subscribe" to the news forum, though. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm guessing it will send you an email for each new news post?
http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/mis … ribe&fid=4
Not sure if it will send you an email for each reply to a thread, though. That would be annoying!
Well, the whole point of the paychecks, ironically, is NOT to benefit the owner, but to slowly make a house more and more attractive to robbers over time, even when the owner isn't actively playing.
Whatever earnings that are stolen should probably just not be reported to you... because it's kind of confusing. So, you should probably just see a report showing anything you've earned that hasn't been taken yet.
Okay! Yeah, I'll get this new behavior in place sometime in the next few days. We'll see how it goes.