The Castle Doctrine Forums

George

Guest

No Perma-Death while testing house?

Having just bought this game, and knowing nothing about it, or how the trap systems work, I'm finding the Perma-Death during the testing phase of my house really frustrating. It would seem to make more sense if when I died the game just returned me to editor mode so I could tweak my design.

Any thoughts? Am I just being a baby?

colorfusion

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 537

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

Testing your house is meant to show it's fair, so if it takes you loads of tries to get through then it isn't really "fair" for other people either.
Rougelikes are often quite frustrating when you die.

Last edited by colorfusion (2013-04-11 03:47:49)

Matrix

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 137

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

Having just bought this game, and knowing nothing about it, or how the trap systems work, I'm finding the Perma-Death during the testing phase of my house really frustrating. It would seem to make more sense if when I died the game just returned me to editor mode so I could tweak my design.

Any thoughts? Am I just being a baby?

It's rough in the beginning, but this will actually force you to make simpler (read "safer to test") traps until you learn all the mechanics. And even when you do, there is a lot of things that can go wrong when you are testing. Basically the game puts you in danger even when you are building the defense so that complicated defense with no room for error is also harder to test. If you manage to pull it off though you have the right to publish it and defend all the money that you steal from other players.

But there are some tricks you can use to make the testing phase safer until you are really sure that it works as you intended.

Make extra emergency exits in walls so that you don't get stuck when testing.
Temporarily replace walls with windows to see if your system is acting like you want it to.
Temporarily replace part of the Electric Floor/Pits with normal wire and test movement/trap triggers on that instead of the Electric Floor/Pits itself.
Temporarily replace Pit Bulls with Chihuahuas, they both have the exact same mechanics, but Chihuahuas won't kill you.

Once you double check that everything works as intended (but don't walk into the vault), replace everything with the right tiles and perform the dangerous proof run (reaching the vault).

You can also check the wiki for extra info.

Last edited by Matrix (2013-04-07 10:09:06)

setz

Member

From: NM

Registered: 2013-04-03

Posts: 121

Website

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

Having just bought this game, and knowing nothing about it, or how the trap systems work, I'm finding the Perma-Death during the testing phase of my house really frustrating. It would seem to make more sense if when I died the game just returned me to editor mode so I could tweak my design.

Any thoughts? Am I just being a baby?

A quick tip George. No matter how far you get in your house or if you see yourself coming close to death, if you walk back to the entrance and leave you are not charged for anything you have put down in your house. This way you can make changes and not be charged for them. I know that doesn't totally solve your house-safeing-death problem but its just something to know. When I first started this was a huge problem for me. Now I know some tips to help avoid it, SOMETIMES. Put chihuahuas instead of pitbulls for testing and once you know the in's and out's of your house, go back to the entrance (to avoid being charged) and then change them to pitbulls.

vraeden

Member

Registered: 2013-04-05

Posts: 23

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

It's a known issue and Rohrer is considering adding testing parts to allow us to test, according to a post somewhere in the forums.  It is my number 1 way of dying too.  G'luck.

Jearr

Guest

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

I would love to see a "safe-test" mode.  You could still keep the "murder-yourself" live test as a requirement before publishing the house, but let me play with my house a little bit first.

As an aside.. why do dogs murder you but ignore your family?  Your wife's murder is one of the first thing many fresh houses experience.. but pitbulls love her.  It's you they hate.. their master.. the world's worst dog-trainer.

DrNoid

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 56

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

The dogs only hate you when you're dressed in your robber outfit and trying to rob your own house. The dogs just hate robbers more than they love you

Jearr

Guest

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

The dogs only hate you when you're dressed in your robber outfit and trying to rob your own house.

Lol, apparently robbers are hardcore method actors.

Omnipotent

Member

From: California

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 23

Re: No Perma-Death while testing house?

I would love to see a "safe-test" mode.  You could still keep the "murder-yourself" live test as a requirement before publishing the house, but let me play with my house a little bit first.

This would be perfect. A second button that we could use to test the house, and press a button while testing at any time to return to the editor. That way you could check your traps and things to make sure they work the way you want, and then you could safely return without losing anything after you prove that your traps are effective.