The Castle Doctrine Forums

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Version 6 Released

We're now a full two months into the public life of The Castle Doctrine, and over 3500 people have joined the alpha test so far.

With all this data about player behavior in hand, I've made some substantial changes to how the game works.  Obviously, there are dozens of little tweaks and bug fixes that hardly deserve mention.  But you'll certainly notice the following major changes right away:

• Family members now wait in place until they spot the robber before they flee to the exit.  This makes protecting them much more practical, since a determined robber cannot simply pace back and forth by the door until they come out.

• Free blueprints are available for each and every house in the game.  You can now study a house beforehand to plan your robbery or consult the blueprints during a robbery.  Simple guessing-game houses (like the 16- and 24-bit combination locks) are no longer viable security strategies.  Real puzzles are still viable, however.

• Mod-based cheating has been thwarted by running a game client server-side to verify all submitted robberies and house self-tests.  Cheats based on protocol sniffing (snatching the map of a house) has been thwarted through the availability of blueprints.

For an example of blueprints in action, consider this view from inside Michael Scott Lee's house:

Four doors.  Which one to pick?  Check the blueprint:

Aha!  Pit bulls.  Door number 3 it is.

Smaller improvements include updated wiring, new indicator lights, control-click to eyedropper a tile while editing, multi-word name search, selling multiple items in one click, and more intelligent paging through house lists.  The full list of changes can be found here:

The Castle Doctrine Change Log

DrNoid

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 56

Re: Version 6 Released

I've got a question regarding the maps:
Quit a few houses start out with a dog on top of a switch, probably after being robbed. Nicholas Robert Snow's house for instance has a "Sticking Pressure Switch / Pit Bull"
In that case, will the switch be pressed, or does the dog first have to step off it and then on it again before it is pressed?

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: Version 6 Released

Yeah, dog must step off first, then step back on.

Obviously, this means some houses can only be robbed once (but they must be fixed up by their owner before the owner can resume playing the game).