The Castle Doctrine Forums

Okay, it's fixed now.  Please keep an eye out for any more strange behavior concerning salary and money.

And thanks to everyone who spotted and reported this to me so quickly!

Sorry for the trouble. 

Yeah, something is broken here.... fixing it now!

Raisane.... but do you want people to know that your vault is empty?  Better to *suspect* that the wife is hiding somewhere in the house, after being disappointed by reaching an empty vault.

Well, the killed part is something you can discover by walking around your house.  I really want to preserve that "oh no" moment.

It is weird to see that earnings report and then find all of it gone, for sure.

Hmm... but can't he walk past some windows on the way to the family, "turning on" various animals back there, which would then run around behind the scenes and open doors behind the robber as he nears the family?

Pit bulls behind one window are dangerous, right?

Also, the brick can only reach 5 tiles, so I think a cat behind a window could still be "safe" in many circumstances.

Yes, it would make this kind of house design much knottier, but knots are good.

The big change here is that animals won't be able to move invisibly deep in the bowels of your house. 

It was a very cool moment, back in v3 or something, before the alpha, when we discovered that emergent property.  Like, whoa!  Look at this fiendish black box that I just built!  But for a new player, it was always like... um, is that a bug?  How is that possible?  There are even a few video reviews where the reviewer is totally puzzled by this kind of invisible, off-screen behavior.  Now at least you'll have to lay eyes on the culprit animal before it causes trouble....

Wait a minute....

If a cat MUST step on buttons behind a wall to open trapdoors or whatever, so as the robber you MUST see in through the windows and let it run to do it's thing.... and you break the windows with a brick and then kill it, well, then it doesn't do it's thing, right?

I mean, I know that you could go in and step on buttons in place of the cat at that point, but I can think of several devices back there that would make that harder to do (one way gates that the cat would have run through but would trap you in there, etc.

Anyway, most of the magic-dance style traps are not just based on an animal doing things behind the scenes that you wish you could stop, as the robber.... but also the animal doing things that are necessary for you as the robber, right?

Oh, man!  I guess I didn't scroll down enough in your current tape list to see those.  Sorry about that.

To make matters worse, I replied in the wrong thread!

Anyway....

Yes, I do see what you're talking about now.  Does look like Noland dumped tools, and Coleman got them.  Funny thing, though, is that Coleman was a different player!  That was about 20 seconds later.... so, another player nabbed them.

Then 20 seconds after that, Noland comes back as Gilmore and dumps more tools.  Then comes back as Rodriguez, Rice, and finally Wolfson, dumping and grabbing a bigger tool-ball each time before stopping.

Funny, though.... after all this, Coleman comes into Wolfson's house and steals the tool ball!

Still, it looks like this kind of tool dumping in a broken house is worth doing, generally.  Also, it's a bit weird to dump tools in the vault at the end of a big robbery and know that you can just waltz back in and get them later (though that does prevent vandalism somewhat, because you don't want to waste tools).

One fix would be if tools only build up in a house upon death of the robber.  When you reach the vault, all tools left over are ditched.  That would prevent any and all quick-turnover tool-dumping....  Essentially, there should be no "get rich quick" grinding loophole of any kind.

Hmm... not seeing that for your current house, Bey.  I see about 8 tapes, with people carefully poking around with minimal tools, avoid death at all costs.

Maybe that happen in your previous house?

Also, the Taber robbery of your house is interesting...  at first, I couldn't figure out why he was "burning" his tools near the end.  Then it seemed like he was making an easy path to your vault... maybe so he could come back for his remaining tools?  But then he continued to burn more tools!

That seems sub-optimal to me.  Optimal would be carving the easy path to the vault and keeping as many tools as you can to dump in the vault, then coming back with no tools to get them.  Maybe he was "tilting" a bit there (as in poker tilting).

Hmm.... again.... wow, having "donald von bakerson, 4:23am" written down on your desk is pretty awesome.... 

You know... what would someone think if they saw that slip of paper?

Also, having a timer ticking there would be thematically weird---I did consider it. 

It's an hour, which is pretty easy to remember... a nice round number.  And not having a timer ticking there makes it a bit more mysterious, like a magic spell or something, where you're watching a real-world clock outside the game instead of spamming the reload-list button watching an on-screen number tick down.  Also, the "hour" part is NOT explained in the game (and might change!).  So for people who don't know, chills will come and go mysteriously.  Maybe after some experimentation, they can figure out that it's an hour, and then it really is like some kind of occult discovery.

Contrast this with the auction timer, which actually has a realtime display ticking down---but that's obviously not supposed to have an occult, mysterious feel to it.  It's an auction.  Cut and dried.

Also, Largestherb, can you explain what it is that you don't like about the chills?  This is the first complaint that I've heard about them.  Most people were so worried about tool dumping and try-again-try-again robber spamming---it seemed like a fix really was needed.

I've seen this happen sometimes too.  Sometimes, I've even traced it to the server itself being slow (not a network issue).  This is running on a VPS (virtual server running as a slice on a shared machine), so it could be the case that load spikes on other servers on the same machine might slow our server down.  My hosting company claims that's not supposed to happen (each server is supposed to be isolated from the load of others), but they've never been able to explain these periodic slow-downs.

The other problem, of course, is that it's so sporadic that it's really hard to catch.  By the time I report it, it has usually already cleared up, and then it's too late for them to investigate (they can poke around at logs, but that doesn't help much).

Well, a well-protected wife will (as you've pointed out) preserve half of your money if you get robbed.

Your vault must have a weakness (you must be able to reach it with no tools), but the rules for the family are different (you don't have to reach them during self-test at all, but they have to have an obstacle-free path to the exit---meaning also that you can reach them in build mode).

Killing a child causes the wife to run to the child (so if you fail to protect children, the wife will become vulnerable too).  Also, any family death causes the house state to save.

Now, after your family is totally gone, obviously, the game changes for you somewhat.

But, given that player #2 in the game right now (Black) still has all family members alive.... well... they're clearly not that much of a liability.  Even after the vault is hit for Black, he will still have $5K left to rebuild.

Especially now that money is harder to come by.  Not protecting them at the start of your fresh life will mean you get totally wiped out.

I fully understand the desire for customization.  But I'd never want icing to be the reason you keep playing one of my games. 

I'd rather fix and balance it so that it's way more than just tag.  So that people say, "You know what, this game has no icing, but it doesn't even need it, it's that good!"

The FPS multiplayer example hinges on realtime reflex and tactical skill among players.  It's the same reason you never get bored of basketball. 

This is a bit different from chess, in that there isn't the direct back-and-forth of move and response.  Maybe a bit, but way slower and over weeks.

The hope is that, as house design evolves over time, there will be an endless supply of interesting stuff happening.