Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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Ok as requested, here is my reboot thread. I have hired a programmer and friend to come work full-time on a new version of TCD. He is moving to my town this Wednesday. I have also recruited another 2 very senior programmers to help part-time on the project. In total, we will have one full-time person and 3 part-time folks working on rebooting this game. My goals are very very simple :
1. The game of The Castle Doctrine that you play today will still be perfectly intact somewhere in the reboot of the game. It may not be the version you start out playing as a beginner, but you will be able to level up to it at some point.
2. To expand the user base so 1,000s of people are playing every day. This includes making the game more accessible and more appealing to more players. That means changing some themes and adding new platforms (think iOS and Android).
3. To eliminate or at least greatly reduce cheating.
4. To not lose a lot money at this endeavor.
Let me get the bad news out of the way. It is my opinion that it is not enough to make a $3 cheat proof version of TCD to make this game succeed long term. That means that we are going to have to change some major elements of the game, frankly, I personally don't even like some of the changes I am thinking about. However, I know we need them to get the audience we need for the game to succeed. However, as mentioned above the game you play today will be playable in terms of game piece behavior and game mechanic, just some of the graphics and themes may be changed.
Here are some things that I am thinking about with regard to the game. I am not going to write down everything we are planning at this point, but I will try to cover the big topics. Some ideas I am sure about, some I am less sure about.
Things I am pretty sure about :
- The name is going to change. As far as I am concerned, TCD is Jason's game. Not that this isn't going to be mostly his game too, but I think it will be better if there is no confusion.
- It will be closed source. It feels crappy to take someone's open source thing and make a closed source version. However, I think it will help cut down on the cheating. I know about DaVinci's DLL injection on FTM, but there are other things we can do to protect against that.
- The game is going to cost somewhere between $0-$2.99. Probably free in the beginning, and then costing a nominal amount to make the banning of an account for cheating mean something.
- The theme of the game is going to change. There will be a game piece like the wife that can pickup a weapon and kill you, but it's not going to be your wife. There will not be children being murdered in the game. These things don't bother me personally, I know it's a game, and it's meant to be intense. However, I think that if we are going to be available in the mobile markets the game has to have a 4+ age rating to attract maximum user base.
- There will be the concept of realms or neighborhoods. Meaning, that under one account you can have multiple characters playing in multiple realms. This accomplishes a few things. As anti-dual account as I am, I personally understand the feeling of wanting to go still be able to play the game/rob while you have a big house you are too nervous to blow up. The realms will allow you to be nervous with your house in one neighborhood and be a reckless robber in another without the possibility to of colluding between those 2 characters. Realms/hoods will also allow you to have different game levels for different level players. Some neighborhoods could potentially not have electronics. Some neighborhoods may give you 3 lives when it comes to self-testing, etc. There will be at least one neighborhood that represents the game as it is today in terms of how game play works (and that might be considered the hardcore neighborhood). Who knows maybe there will eventually even be harder neighborhoods than the game is today. We could have expanded and more complicated tilesets ala iceman's Fortress Theory Mod.
- There will be a less steep learning curve. There will be tutorial levels that people can learn the game as a robber by attacking "pre-canned" tutorial houses before they are dumped into the deep-end with house creation and PVP play.
- There will be a iOS and Android version.
- There will be offline things you can do in the game (work on house designs, play canned puzzle houses to practice, etc).
- If someone looks in your house even without taking a step, there will still be a security tape.
- There will be some realms where you cannot take more tools in value than is in the vault (to stop broken house wealth transfer).
- There will be a button that allows the owner to get back into his/her house next. Ie, you are being robbed and you get into to your house. You can hit a button that says, that will lock everyone out after that robber but you for some fixed amount of time (15 minutes after the robber leaves, or something like that).
- There will be the ability to pause and unlist your house in some realms. One things that makes this game tough for people who have jobs or families, is you can be in the middle of a big build out and all the sudden you got to put it down, and you are completely jammed. I don't think it is fair that people like Blip and LordOfHam (nothing personal guys, you are two of my favorite guys on the boards), get the ability to pause/unlist through macros while the rest of us cannot. There will be some realms where pausing is not allowed (hardcore mode), and if we find account that is macroing in those realms that will be a ban.
- There may be different house shapes and sizes depending on what realm you are in. Beginner levels may have much smaller floor space. There may be much larger floors in other levels.
- There will be a cash contest similar to what Jason did when we launched TCD.
- I will give everyone on this forum (as of some day before the launch) a free copy.
Things I am less sure about :
- As I mentioned in another thread, we already have a proof of concept version where all the logic happens on the server, and the client is literally just a dumb client with no game play logic. This does 3 things, it absolutely prevents cheating by dumping the map. It also prevents disconnect scouting. Lastly, and kind of most interestingly, it would allow a home owner to watch a robbery in progress (imagine you got a camera system at your house that you can watch on your ipad at work, type of thing). However, there are some downsides to this model. Namely, it's going to cost me a lot more money to run servers that are doing a lot more work. So this might be the way the game is played only in the more elite realms. The client will ultimately need the game logic in it, so people can play the offline puzzle houses, etc, so again it will likely be decided by neighborhood.
- There will be bannable offenses. Like anything in this world, an innocent person will probably eventually get banned. However, that is the price we will pay to cut down on cheating. Again, I am hoping the realms reduces the need to cheat (and the addition of many more players).
- There will not be random and changing character names. I really like this about the original game, the whole not knowing your name thing. However, in practice it would seem everyone finds out their name anyway, and all it does is make it harder for people to tell when they have been colluded against. This way if it becomes clear that 2 or 3 characters are working together, the end players will be able to tell better.
- Maybe there will be a reporting mechanism where people can click users from their tapes that they believe are colluding. If 2 (or more) accounts keep getting flagged as colluding it could trigger something that has an admin do an investigation.
- There may be an asset tracking system as described in my other threads to cut down on account collusion. This is complicated so I am hoping it is unnecessary.
- There will be much better and detailed house stats. Number of kills total, number of visits total. There will be robber stats. There will potentially be robber and house badges for achievements.
- There may be special items in the some neighborhoods that can be stolen from house to house like paintings that can either be used in the house or as a robber. A dumb example, a rifle that can shoot 1 time per robbery but does not go away and has a range of 8 squares.
- In realms where there is pausing/unlisting of houses allowed. You may earn some income for every hour your house is listed and open to robbing.
- I may remove view shifting. I feel like this is really non-obvious and is more of an artifact of how the game was built than intentional game play mechanic. Plus, it really doesn't make sense, you can either see something x squares away or not, it shouldn't matter if you headed toward the south wall first. This may be the one departure from the current game, and not something I want to change from realm to realm. Thoughts?
I am very open to feedback. Please try to keep it constructive. I am not trying to ruin Jason's game, or get rich off of it or whatever. This is the path I see to having the game we love last a long time. I have mentioned this before, but for anyone knew I have talked to Jason about forking my own version of this game and he was very supportive. Again, as I mentioned in another thread, he has done a great and generous thing by making this game open source and copyright free as he has given us the tools and latitude to try to make this game into what we may want.
At some point when we have made some progress we will beta and have a call for testers.
edit : fixed some missing words and added the point of the earning income on unpaused houses and the idea of different house size and shape, and potentially removing view shifting.
Last edited by cullman (2014-05-27 09:41:23)
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I don't think that changing the themes and a couple of the darker details are 'bad news', to be honest. For me, the fact that we currently kill a wife to take her money, or that it is kids that are the device needed to have a clear path to the exit, activate panic buttons etc, are immaterial. You could replace them with, I dunno, a 'home defence robot' and a couple of trained monkeys or something. Okay, perhaps that's a bit whacky, but for me as long as you have one or more devices to (a) store half your money, and (b) have the unique behaviour of going for the exit upon sight, then the game is intact.
I also love the idea of having stealable objects that that be used in game. Like paintings, in that they are finite in number and each is unique, but with the bonus that they can be used as house objects (or robbing tools that you retain after a successful robbery). Such as a can of spray paint to black out a window before you step into its visible space, for example.
Anyhow - it sounds exciting. I'd buy it. Hope it goes according to plan.
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I don't think that changing the themes and a couple of the darker details are 'bad news', to be honest. For me, the fact that we currently kill a wife to take her money, or that it is kids that are the device needed to have a clear path to the exit, activate panic buttons etc, are immaterial. You could replace them with, I dunno, a 'home defence robot' and a couple of trained monkeys or something. Okay, perhaps that's a bit whacky, but for me as long as you have one or more devices to (a) store half your money, and (b) have the unique behaviour of going for the exit upon sight, then the game is intact.
I also love the idea of having stealable objects that that be used in game. Like paintings, in that they are finite in number and each is unique, but with the bonus that they can be used as house objects (or robbing tools that you retain after a successful robbery). Such as a can of spray paint to black out a window before you step into its visible space, for example.
Anyhow - it sounds exciting. I'd buy it. Hope it goes according to plan.
Pohaku, yeah I don't think it's that big of a deal either, but I have learned people hate change. Also, you nailed it in terms of robots. I was thinking of a "sentinel robot" that replicates the wife's behavior (can pick up a weapon and stores half your money) and 2 "cleaning robots" that serve the function that the children do. I hadn't thought of monkeys, but I don't like the idea of killing monkeys either. Also, by using robots, we could conceivably have some realms where you can buy replacement robots or have more than the original 3, and so on. Of course, in hardcore/original mode, when your robot is disabled (dead) it is disabled (dead) for good.
Also, I love your spray paint idea. I am adding it to my list. It actually makes me wonder if it wouldn't be pretty neat to even have a very special/unique item that is a spray paint object that lets you black out the actual security camera. This would in effect be the equivalent of a disconnect scout the robber could live through (and not accomplished through cheating). Of course, the home owner would get home and get a notice that his camera has been blacked out. Surely, there would be no bigger message to an owner that something big was going to go down if it hadn't already.
Last edited by cullman (2014-05-26 08:11:45)
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I like all your suggestions except removing the view shifting. That's a very cool feature for unintuitive puzzles, even if it might be an artefact. I suggest keeping it but making it irrelevant in beginner's realms by setting the house sizes and the view shifting borders so that you always see the same tiles.
More suggestions:
- Make chill times proportional to player numbers. I think in a realm with about 20 players 24 hours are way too much. And of course make chills times lower for easy realms, but I'm sure you have already thought of that.
- Let there be a realm with no money at all, free building (maybe with some restrictions to house elements) and no tools, but very low chill time.
Just a thought: I think what makes Jason's original game so unforgiving (and what might be his artistic theme) is that you build your own house and every house in the game belongs to someone real. If you want to make an interesting game appealing to a large player base, you could get rid of that. It could be a puzzle game with user-generated levels, but the houses you create don't have to be associated with your life as a robber. I know it takes away much of the intensity of the experience, but this could be the solution for at least some of the realms.
The houses you build could exist forever, with each robber getting a new chance with the original design and damage saving only for that particular robber until he finally solves it. If every house has only a small amount of cash (maybe based on it's difficulty), you could still use that money to chain-rob more houses with tools, but it's not the owner's money and available only for robbing. I think this would make dual-account abuse mostly irrelevant.
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I hope this all goes well; I'd love to see the game get revitalized. One clarification: when you say "change the themes", does that mean an entirely different theme, or just a slightly changed one? For example, will the game now take place in medieval dungeons or high-tech space labs, or will it still be robbing houses in the 1990s?
Also, is there any window of time when we should be expecting the beta?
Current life: Not dead, but I have no clue who I am
The Life and Times of Christopher Alvin Harris
Record: 149 Paintings!
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A slight spin-off suggestion from what Gyuri says there - have some houses immortalised, with no money in the vault but with a substantial prize for solving it toolless. Perhaps once a house has been uncracked for X number of days, it is saved to the server and then, when the owner eventually does die, that house is either added to the main list as a 'challenge house', or alternatively added to a separate list which is only for challenge houses. Make it a prize of, say 25% of the house's build value for solving it toolless. Normal rules re: chills apply, and it would be an awesome challenge to solve some of the big houses toolless. Of course you can use tools to scout it, break into combo locks etc, but you would have to map it all out for your tool-free run to get the prize.
Just a thought... I'm sure there will be a thousand good ideas coming at you already!
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Great feedback already. Gyuri, I really like your solution for the shift view thing, that didn't occur to me, to just make the beginner maps small enough where it isn't an impact. The one thing I don't like about the shift-view is I don't think I personally would have ever figured out what is going on in those puzzles without the boards. I think mobile game users are less likely to use the boards to discover. I also like your chill time idea.
As for the theme, yeah probably a pretty big departure. I actually love the robbing theme, but I think we will likely have to pivot to something more like space pirates (it's funny our 2 original ideas were space and dungeon type of fantasy thing - so great minds I guess). One thing I was thinking about was galaxies are neighborhoods, and you can buy bigger and different shapes to build your traps in, basically you are buying spaceship hulls then building them out to protect yourself from other space pirates (the other cool thing about this idea, is it is pretty flexible. We could in certain circumstances let spaceships move between galaxies - someday, as our current plans are big enough as is). I think we need to pivot IMHO, cause even without the murder of children and wives, I can see some parents not wanting their kids to get the idea it's cool to drop a brick through a neighbors window, then mash the neighbors cat or chihuahua with another brick. Even though, personally, I think this is a stupid pov and I don't believe that video games cause this type of behavior, there is no reason to let it get in the way of potential user adoption.
As for the immortal houses, or houses without owners. I totally agree. This is what I am calling "canned houses". They will be houses that are built into the game. They will never go away, and they will pay some fixed amount the first time you rob them. I imagine most of them will be either user contributed or things the team come up with, but they will be completely controlled by the staff. That way they can be editorialized by the staff, we can determine what's the right prize value. We can make sure that they are at the appropriate levels and difficulties. For instance, a first house just might be a wall with 3 doors. With an attack droid (the artist formerly known as Pitbull) behind 2 of them and the vault behind the 3rd. That 60 second map can teach people about scouting, how to run out when a dog is chasing you etc. Maybe the 12th tutorial map might teach how a leap of faith works. Then there might be canned houses that are literally like "hall of fame" houses. Maps that lived at the top a long time, that the user's have retired and donated to the staff to make canned houses out of. Solving those houses could give you different badges, like "I solved Pohaku's Super House #4 with no tools!" Or there could be a category of canned houses, like where it's a really small map, and there is a dollar limit to how much you can bring in tool-wise, there could be toolless house challenges. I imagine these sort of maps being loaded into the game and playable offline, allowing you to pause etc, to allow people to practice and get better at the game in more of a casual game sort of way. Really, I want the game to try to be as approachable as Angry Birds (not really but almost) at the beginning and help the player's that are capable of it eventually get up to level where they can use their scores from this game as a credit towards an electrical engineering degree.
As for timeline, we really are just starting. I would hope to have something beta by late summer. I am somewhat worried about this game dying completely and us losing our starting testing and playing audience, in the meantime, but I guess we are only talking about a few dozen people anyway.
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can't wait for it, i love this game too much to see it disappear
Current Incarnation: none
Previous Houses: Ticking Nightmare - Luna's Park - Hightower Mansion - Chang's Place
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If you would like the community to come up with some puzzle houses, I'm sure we'd oblige. I'm thinking they should all be commit gate free, but obviously could include lethal traps. We could create them in castle draft and display for you to pick and choose between.
When I have time later, I'll start a separate thread just for this!
Last edited by AMWhy (2014-05-26 17:45:43)
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If you would like the community to come up with some puzzle houses, I'm sure we'd oblige. I'm thinking they should all be commit gate free, but obviously could include lethal traps. We could create them in castle draft and display for you to pick and choose between.
When I have time later, I'll start a separate thread just for this!
if someone has to design puzzle houses, no one's better than those who have spent hours playing the game
Last edited by mala (2014-05-27 08:06:23)
Current Incarnation: none
Previous Houses: Ticking Nightmare - Luna's Park - Hightower Mansion - Chang's Place
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Very exciting. Love the proposed ideas, and I agree with Pohaku about the theme being cool but immaterial.
I think I'm also pro-getting rid of sight-shift traps. With respect to the people that first implemented them, I think they're counter-intuitive in a bad way. Like, you can clearly see that buttons are available in the house build, and can intuit that they're part of a house even if you never see them in a magic dance. There's no explanation for how robber sight works (and why would there be? the robber isn't supposed to be a house mechanic), and only hardcore nerds (and not the mainstream) would really want to figure that stuff out.
2¢
I only post because I care <3
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AMWhy wrote:If you would like the community to come up with some puzzle houses, I'm sure we'd oblige. I'm thinking they should all be commit gate free, but obviously could include lethal traps. We could create them in castle draft and display for you to pick and choose between.
When I have time later, I'll start a separate thread just for this!
if someone has to design puzzle houses, no one's better than those who have spent hours playing the game
Yes, great idea, and thanks for starting the thread. I am ok with some houses at some levels having commit gates, as I imagine there will be tutorial levels where death isn't a big deal (either you have multiple lives or there is no cost of dying cause you don't have a house yet), and learning about commit gates and other things through death are an important part of learning the game. With other "puzzle houses" we could have different difficulty levels/ratings where there is a threshold that makes it clear that this house can, will and will try to kill you.
Also, while we have a call for tutorial houses going. I am totally open to suggestions for stealable "special durable items", like Pohaku's spray paint for windows or the rifle in my original post.
Last edited by cullman (2014-05-27 09:43:53)
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Very exciting. Love the proposed ideas, and I agree with Pohaku about the theme being cool but immaterial.
I think I'm also pro-getting rid of sight-shift traps. With respect to the people that first implemented them, I think they're counter-intuitive in a bad way. Like, you can clearly see that buttons are available in the house build, and can intuit that they're part of a house even if you never see them in a magic dance. There's no explanation for how robber sight works (and why would there be? the robber isn't supposed to be a house mechanic), and only hardcore nerds (and not the mainstream) would really want to figure that stuff out.
2¢
Yeah, that was my initial thought, too, though gyuri's suggestion would allow shift view traps not come into play until people are more experienced.... I dunno let's let everyone chime in and see where we end up.
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A single use X-ray machine:
See clearly through all walls in your current field of view until your next move, whereupon vision returns to normal.
Force fields: passable by robots, but not by humans.
Virus USB: install on a robot to change the robots behavior.
Portal gun: fire once on a wall, then later on a second wall to create a temporary portal. Would make a quick escape route. Watch out, once the portal is open robots can pass through too!
Bomb: clear a 3x3 grid of all walls, power and wires. Caution: can be dangerous to robots.
Light touch shoes. Walk on pressure pads without any pressure!
Torch/ blackout. So the power is cut and your visibility is reduced. So are the robots'!
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It sounds great! It's gonna be awesome to have more players.
One tool that I would personally love to try is a one-time battery pack that maybe powers something for a few moves, just so you can go past trapdoors or use on inverted voltage-triggered switches.
I might add some begginners maps, I thought maybe one where you can see all the electronics tiles in action?
So looking forward to it
Thank you
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One tool that I would personally love to try is a one-time battery pack that maybe powers something for a few moves, just so you can go past trapdoors or use on inverted voltage-triggered switches.
This is a great idea. I've heard variants of it for some time, but they all seemed overpowered; the limited-duration aspect you're suggesting seems like it would balance the tool pretty well.
Current life: Not dead, but I have no clue who I am
The Life and Times of Christopher Alvin Harris
Record: 149 Paintings!
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jordi13 wrote:One tool that I would personally love to try is a one-time battery pack that maybe powers something for a few moves, just so you can go past trapdoors or use on inverted voltage-triggered switches.
This is a great idea. I've heard variants of it for some time, but they all seemed overpowered; the limited-duration aspect you're suggesting seems like it would balance the tool pretty well.
in a game that is based on keeping things powered/unpowered that would be overpowered even for a couple of rounds.
Imagine how many design can be solved by giving power to a pit for a couple of sec, 9/10 mid/low-level houses use pits as a primary vault defense.
i personally like the ability to repair something you have previously broke, or to temporary fix a wire you've cut
Current Incarnation: none
Previous Houses: Ticking Nightmare - Luna's Park - Hightower Mansion - Chang's Place
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may i suggest Hi-Tech neighborhood?
don't know if it's possible, but what about the ability to craft integrated circuits?
We may purchase a silicium board that let you fit 3x3 5x5 9x9 electronic parts in a single tile, that way stuff like logic gates, bit counters and so on will be much more easier to manage, giving players the ability to create really advanced stuff.
The robbers can inspect those circuits by simply looking at them (highlight and zoom) and maybe act on them with clips, cutters, welders...
we've seen amazing things so far, i wonder what could be done with the appropriate space.
Current Incarnation: none
Previous Houses: Ticking Nightmare - Luna's Park - Hightower Mansion - Chang's Place
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Ok the gig is up, if the 8 people would stop believing this clown cullman, he would have gave up trolling months ago. You all got owned, he will never do any of this crap he spilled for 90 days? He went from the biggest complaining sissy to the most seeker of attention. Slap this fool with all the cocks he eats. нормальный сука. Remember when he hated multiple accounts then got his own? Hypocrite Maximus. Even his boyfriend gave up on him.
Поэтому он знает, о кодах с открытым исходным кодом карте потому, что. ?! Займет одну знать. Я знаю, что он делает, но никогда не будет ему. Даже его друг отказался от него. << него.
Last edited by crazyace (2014-06-04 21:04:15)
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Jason shouldn't allow cullman to ruin his game & integrity by allowing this break down of trash in front of his own game. Castle Doctrine is and still will be the slowest, coolest game until Cullman, Self proclaimed "cuntman" came and scared all the new players off by making false accusations. Now he will "Make it better" for you all. Every business man will see through your theft.
Just read back all the other threads from cullman cunt clan. Anyone who thought his ideas were decent; ironically switched opinions quickly. He is too busy for castle doctrine if you remember.
Should have stopped him months ago before he created a 60% population decrease.
Last edited by crazyace (2014-06-04 19:54:27)
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I take that back, 3 people posting 8 times, isn't 8 people. Shouldn't you go save the world ......cullman?
From business perspective, he doesn't need a remake or kill from within, just promotions. Cost you nothing; but positivity. Keep making your own forums. What do they say? Страдание любит компанию.
Last edited by crazyace (2014-06-04 21:00:52)
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may i suggest Hi-Tech neighborhood?
don't know if it's possible, but what about the ability to craft integrated circuits?
We may purchase a silicium board that let you fit 3x3 5x5 9x9 electronic parts in a single tile, that way stuff like logic gates, bit counters and so on will be much more easier to manage, giving players the ability to create really advanced stuff.The robbers can inspect those circuits by simply looking at them (highlight and zoom) and maybe act on them with clips, cutters, welders...
we've seen amazing things so far, i wonder what could be done with the appropriate space.
I like this idea.
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I was thinking... How about neighborhoods where only certain tools are allowed? Also, neighborhoods where only certain building materials are allowed. For example, one with just walls and dogs, but no dog meat, guns or clubs allowed would be interesting. Remember, there'd have to be a safe path to the exit.
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I was thinking... How about neighborhoods where only certain tools are allowed? Also, neighborhoods where only certain building materials are allowed. For example, one with just walls and dogs, but no dog meat, guns or clubs allowed would be interesting. Remember, there'd have to be a safe path to the exit.
Agreed on this one as well. I was even thinking of the beginner PVP not allowing advanced electronics (ie, no voltage switches or inverted voltage switches).
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http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 4299#p4299
This post pretty from way back when pretty much sums up what you are talking about here , with different worlds and such, excepting the 'nuke' part. I think it would add variety to a game that can otherwise become quite stale.
The rich aren't safe. Nobody is safe. -jere ...but the smell wafts out from the pit, obviously. - Jason Rohrer
And the more dickish they are, the more I feel like beating a house to destruction after finally figuring it out. -bey bey
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