For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

CallousBuddha · 2014-02-22 11:51:43

I've been having such a hard time getting into this. I've watched about 8 hours of videos online and really want to jump in...

So finally I get to setting up my traps, but of course with $2000 you can't do jack. Someone was nice enough to kill themselves after easily finding my safe, giving me lots and lots of money to work with. But in the middle of testing one system I neglected another and I got killed. I'm so defeated right now. I'm not going to get another donor just giving me thousands of dollars to start off with, and $2000 isn't nearly enough to make a system that won't be defeated easily. I don't even know where to begin again.

My enthusiasm is completely deflated; I don't have the will to log in again.

I mean... fuck it took me an hour and a half just to work out the timings on two systems to match up. I'm not going to be able to replicate it, even if I did have the money. It's just gone.

All because I made a simple mistake and turned the wrong way in a hurry to test another set of systems before lunch. Just make the game take you back to the start and say, "Nope, that's not going to work. Try again." I got shot my by own wife. How does that possibly add more to the game than just letting me start over?

RevealingGekco · 2014-02-22 12:00:09

The first time is the worst! Keep coming back

(for a different game, dwarf fortress, but semi-applicable to any rogue-like)

MMaster · 2014-02-22 12:02:37

CallousBuddha wrote:

I've been having such a hard time getting into this. I've watched about 8 hours of videos online and really want to jump in...
So finally I get to setting up my traps, but of course with $2000 you can't do jack. Someone was nice enough to kill themselves after easily finding my safe, giving me lots and lots of money to work with. But in the middle of testing one system I neglected another and I got killed. I'm so defeated right now. I'm not going to get another donor just giving me thousands of dollars to start off with, and $2000 isn't nearly enough to make a system that won't be defeated easily. I don't even know where to begin again.
My enthusiasm is completely deflated; I don't have the will to log in again.
I mean... fuck it took me an hour and a half just to work out the timings on two systems to match up. I'm not going to be able to replicate it, even if I did have the money. It's just gone.
All because I made a simple mistake and turned the wrong way in a hurry to test another set of systems before lunch. Just make the game take you back to the start and say, "Nope, that's not going to work. Try again." I got shot my by own wife. How does that possibly add more to the game than just letting me start over?

It's part of the game - you need to be careful. It is perma-death game where you die from your own traps when you are not careful. You will die 1000000 times and it will almost always be because of something you didn't expect or because you were not careful. You will learn from that and next time you will know. Sorry but nothing about that is going to change - it's one of the core mechanics of the game to make you feel bad.

StefanLindskog · 2014-02-22 12:12:17

Hey! At least you died at the hands of your one true love, and not some shitty neighbor. There's a silver lining to be found in any situation.

On a more serious note, I feel for you. This is the core of the game, though - and it's a tough concept to accept. Once you do, you will love it - even the dying from mistakes part. It kicks you in the nuts, but you learn. Believe me - I've died more in my own houses than in others. Don't give up, man! We need you(r cash)!

redxaxder · 2014-02-22 12:25:41

Paraphrasing what Jason said to a similar comment, perhaps what you're building is simply too dangerous.

Jabloko · 2014-02-22 12:34:12

I had this too, I know how you feel. I died when having a house that was worth 10k, and already had some lovely concrete and steel walls around, kept killing people like magic, as most of them had no idea what was coming for them

The following rules are to be adopted while testing your house:

1. If you don't touch your vault, and walk away, as you would do in a normal robbery, the game will take you back straight to the construction window, and your costs are NOT deducted from your funds yet. So you could build a house with 10443451423525 money, walk all the way to your vault, decide that you don't like it, and walk back to the entrance, redo the whole thing. (Of course, if your house lets you do that ). In other words: FUNDS ARE ONLY DEDUCTED AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SELF-TEST. This is a very nice feature of the game.

2. Use chihuahuas instead of pit bulls, red indicator lights instead of electric floors, green indicator lights instead of powered trapdoors AND powered doors, windows instead of pits, and don't give your wife a shotgun. Do a test-run with these safety precautions , and if you reach the vault (again, don't touch it!), walk all the way back, and redo your home, making ABSOLUTELY sure that you only exchange the aforementioned things with their lethal counterpart, and that you do the EXACT same things as last time. Do that every single time when your modify your home, you never know if you accidentally cut a circuit somewhere, or one of your wall circuits are touching the electric floor they shouldn't be touching. It won't cost you a penny.

3. Be paranoid. Seriously, I died so many times in this game, I don't take the slightest risk any more unless I'm DAMN sure I'm doing the right thing. If you have some nervousness as you walk up to your commitment trap, leave, check everything again, and than give it a go.

4. Test for all traps. Test if they would have killed you (obviously, with safe substitutes). Dying of your own traps is awkward, but robbers NOT dying of your own traps is even worse. Than finally, do a "solution" test run, doing the counting/magic dancing/pit bull mazing, or whatever you have in place, to see if you can reach your vault.

Hope that helps, enjoy your game!
J

42dustman · 2014-02-22 12:36:50

CallousBuddha wrote:

I've been having such a hard time getting into this. I've watched about 8 hours of videos online and really want to jump in...
So finally I get to setting up my traps, but of course with $2000 you can't do jack. Someone was nice enough to kill themselves after easily finding my safe, giving me lots and lots of money to work with. But in the middle of testing one system I neglected another and I got killed. I'm so defeated right now. I'm not going to get another donor just giving me thousands of dollars to start off with, and $2000 isn't nearly enough to make a system that won't be defeated easily. I don't even know where to begin again.
My enthusiasm is completely deflated; I don't have the will to log in again.
I mean... fuck it took me an hour and a half just to work out the timings on two systems to match up. I'm not going to be able to replicate it, even if I did have the money. It's just gone.
All because I made a simple mistake and turned the wrong way in a hurry to test another set of systems before lunch. Just make the game take you back to the start and say, "Nope, that's not going to work. Try again." I got shot my by own wife. How does that possibly add more to the game than just letting me start over?

If you want to start with a decent house you need to rob someone first. Buy tools with your initial 2k and try your luck on the houses in the 6k to 15k range, if you fail on all the houses then wait a day for the chills to pass and try again, at some point you will succeed.

It is also a good idea to have the house design you want on hands before you go robbing. Draw your future home on Castle Draft and you will have a reference that can make your actual home building much faster. And if you're unsure about some aspect of the home you have designed you should test it with safe placeholders (chihuahuas in place of pitbulls, red indicator lights in place of electric floors and green indicator lights in place of powered pits and powered doors) and then exit back through the entry door so the design won't be saved.

And if you like some home design you have made and are afraid to lose it you can always save a mapshot from it: Press '+' and a map image of your entire house will be saved in the game directory.

StefanLindskog · 2014-02-22 12:43:52

42dustman wrote:

And if you like some home design you have made and are afraid to lose it you can always save a mapshot from it: Press '+' and a map image of your entire house will be saved in the game directory.

Really? I did not know. Happy happy joy joy!

Last edited by StefanLindskog (2014-02-22 12:44:07)

CallousBuddha · 2014-02-22 13:33:31

I'm okay with the hard core/rogue-like elements here. I actually played Rogue... the real Rogue back in the 80-90s. All the time too, because that was all my 386 could run!

This however seems unnecessarily punitive. It's going to push people, like me, to just give up. In my mind it's "less than $20" and I'd rather walk away from that if I feel I've gotten a bad deal, than invest more time into it. When that happens to enough people this game is going to die out in a hurry.

Jason doesn't care because he gets paid regardless, but the player-base should be demanding this game be more forgiving so that new players stick around. The fun for everyone will either come or go with the player-base, so don't drive them out.

Last edited by CallousBuddha (2014-02-22 16:05:18)

iceman · 2014-02-22 13:38:36

Even better - if you EVER reached your safe in your self test, you can get a copy of it for castledraft. Go into your recordedGames folder, find the latest game file, search for #998. There will be a long list of numbers like that - copy that line, and paste it in the import part of castledraft.com (there are better instruction on that site as well).

Jabloko wrote:

1. If you don't touch your vault, and walk away, as you would do in a normal robbery, the game will take you back straight to the construction window, and your costs are NOT deducted from your funds yet. So you could build a house with 10443451423525 money, walk all the way to your vault, decide that you don't like it, and walk back to the entrance, redo the whole thing. (Of course, if your house lets you do that big_smile). In other words: FUNDS ARE ONLY DEDUCTED AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SELF-TEST. This is a very nice feature of the game.

Unfortunately, you can't enter a self test if you're in the red zone (spent more money on your house than you have), so this doesn't work. You still can do a self test with light and chihuahuas and not have to pay for it, though (as long as you don't reach the safe)

colorfusion · 2014-02-22 13:43:19

CallousBuddha wrote:

I'm okay with the hard core/rogue-like elements here. I actually played Rogue... the real Rogue back in the 80-90s. All the time too, because that was all my 386 could run!
This however seems unnecessarily punitive. It's going to push people, like me, to just give up. In my mind it's "less than $20" and I'd rather walk away from that if I feel I've gotten a bad deal, than invest more time into it. When that happens to enough people this game is going to die out in a hurry.
Jason doesn't care because he gets paid regardless, but the player-base should be demanding this game be more forgiving so that new players stick around. The fun for everyone will either come or go with the player-base, so don't drive them out.

The permadeath is a really essential part of the game, Jason has given his opinions on it multiple times. It's most likely not going to be removed because new people dislike it. If you keep playing past the initial shock of losing everything then you can begin to see that removing it would really ruin the game. If Jason gave in to every demand of new players then the game wouldn't be worth it for more experienced players.

As a tip for any new people reading, don't spend hours building your house straight away. It's exciting to get building your dream trap, but you will lose it, and probably on the self test from misunderstanding game mechanics.

Also Jason doesn't really seem to care about the money, or at least not to the extent that a lot of other game developers do. If he did, then smoothing out the first part of the game would probably be top priority to get good reviews, rather than sticking to what the game's meant to be and making it something unique.

Last edited by colorfusion (2014-02-22 13:46:45)

iceman · 2014-02-22 13:49:22

colorfusion wrote:

CallousBuddha wrote:
I'm okay with the hard core/rogue-like elements here. I actually played Rogue... the real Rogue back in the 80-90s. All the time too, because that was all my 386 could run!
This however seems unnecessarily punitive. It's going to push people, like me, to just give up. In my mind it's "less than $20" and I'd rather walk away from that if I feel I've gotten a bad deal, than invest more time into it. When that happens to enough people this game is going to die out in a hurry.
Jason doesn't care because he gets paid regardless, but the player-base should be demanding this game be more forgiving so that new players stick around. The fun for everyone will either come or go with the player-base, so don't drive them out.
Also Jason doesn't really seem to care about the money, or at least not to the extent that a lot of other game developers do. If he did, then smoothing out the first part of the game would probably be top priority to get good reviews, rather than sticking to what the game's meant to be.

He's also mentioned several times when talking about his anti-sales policy that he doesn't wan't to "trick" people into buying his game just because it's cheap and then never play it - definitely not the attitude of someone who just cares about getting paid.

JoyOfTrapping · 2014-02-22 14:24:35

LOLLL RevealingGecko! Great graphic. For Castle Doctrine, it would show a stickman dying in all kinds of horribly graphic ways until he finally reaches a vault, then the last frame would be him in a panic room with an expression of satisfaction, in front of a 36-screen display feeding images of people dying in his house.

MMaster wrote:

It's part of the game - you need to be careful. It is perma-death game(...) it's one of the core mechanics of the game(...)

MMaster is right. These are certain realities of the experience. If these aspects are frustrating you a lot, my suggestion is to try and "re-wire" where you derive your feelings of enjoyment from when you play. If you have some kind of expectation of "beating" other people, or making your house "secure," or climbing the ladder and staying on top, try and "unhook" those from your feelings of reward when playing. "Reattach" your feelings of reward and enjoyment to dying and learning something, experimenting and learning about robber behavior by making one or two very specific traps and seeing the results, or being creative and testing ideas in a new house and seeing what happens. Playing in this fashion will allow you to build a strong skill set without the emotional impediments and roadblocks of frustration. You are going to get kicked in the teeth a lot in this game, and if you have a strong investment/attachment to the condition of "winning," each time that happens you are going to tell yourself you hate this game, or it's not fair, or you simply won't have the energy to keep building, robbing and learning without taking a break for a few days.

Try this, it will make the bumps on the learning curve easier to weather and you will have a better time. For each death you experience, you are presented with the opportunity to gain power as a player. Use those moments to extract information from the situation. When seeing it this way, Death ----> Power. Death also is no longer as frustrating as before.

Last edited by JoyOfTrapping (2014-02-22 14:29:42)

Immhotep · 2014-02-22 17:14:45

The game trailer directly lets you know that it's a perma-death game and you can die by your own traps... If you are complaining now means 1: You do not know the game details before purchasing it or 2: You just cannot accept failure in this game which I think you should not buy this game in the first place...

Kimenzar · 2014-02-22 17:16:08

If i make my "go to vault and suicide" runs again, maybe your house is on my list ;P

Leveller · 2014-02-22 17:52:14

Kimenzar, ive had 3 runs to my vault with haning today..

Kimenzar · 2014-02-22 17:57:39

if you died 2 times and build up fast enough the other 2 could be me too

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-02-22 11:51:43

For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#2 2014-02-22 12:00:09

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#3 2014-02-22 12:02:37

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#4 2014-02-22 12:12:17

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#5 2014-02-22 12:25:41

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#6 2014-02-22 12:34:12

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#7 2014-02-22 12:36:50

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#8 2014-02-22 12:43:52

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#9 2014-02-22 13:33:31

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#10 2014-02-22 13:38:36

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#11 2014-02-22 13:43:19

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#12 2014-02-22 13:49:22

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#13 2014-02-22 14:24:35

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#14 2014-02-22 17:14:45

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#15 2014-02-22 17:16:08

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#16 2014-02-22 17:52:14

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

#17 2014-02-22 17:57:39

Re: For the love of god please do not kill me with my own traps.

Board footer