The Castle Doctrine Forums

Passive

Member

From: England

Registered: 2014-09-18

Posts: 420

Done

After many attempts to quit thw final straw happened just now. Had a lovely little house and about 10k worth. I went in a house on my phone then left got the message saying you ditch your bag. Then changed to a different app. Came back to a starter house and the peraon I looked at was 14k richer. My only guess is that my phone lost connection before the message actually reached the server. I dont have the paitents to save for a new house again.  Would be more fun if there were actaully people to rob  but the population is so low now that it takes days of being online to get anywhere.

Will kewp and eye on the forum for cullmans reboot. But this game is pretty much dead. And after looking through the forums and steam reviews I would agree that the population dropped of as there were no sales and the price has stayed full price. This really isnt what happens with old games. An old game shouldnt cost as much as it did when  it first came out. You cant have a MMO with 9 people.

For those of you still playing have fun and maybe someone will topple eppfel.

Last edited by Passive (2014-11-05 05:24:29)

eppfel

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2014-02-01

Posts: 325

Website

Re: Done

Sad, hope you come back once more. But that's just this game. If you didn't use the "unofficial" Android app, you might have lived. Jason once restored a house after it was clear, the death was caused by the game itself. I have the feeling the games not dead, because after every new low there are new once coming in.
And I don't think Mr. Smith will not be the last house standing..

Passive

Member

From: England

Registered: 2014-09-18

Posts: 420

Re: Done

Sad, hope you come back once more. But that's just this game. If you didn't use the "unofficial" Android app, you might have lived. Jason once restored a house after it was clear, the death was caused by the game itself. I have the feeling the games not dead, because after every new low there are new once coming in.
And I don't think Mr. Smith will not be the last house standing..

Just checking in. Its not the dieing because of the app that got me, its having the patients to wait for more money to come in for a house that i don't have at the moment. The game is just a bit too slow for me atm, even though i still really love the concept.

gyuri

Member

Registered: 2013-07-09

Posts: 232

Re: Done

Every time someone who loves the game quits, it's becoming a bit slower and harder for the rest of us.

cullman

Member

Registered: 2014-03-21

Posts: 424

Re: Done

Passive,

Sorry if we contributed to your demise, the Android app is very alpha.  Are you saying you switched out of the game, to a different app and then you were disconnected?  That would be good to know if that is an issue, so we can fix it.  I don't know if sales would have helped or not, but I am planning on making my version free to play to let people go through the tutorials and do some basic robbing, and then maybe have like in app payment of $3-5 to play the game like today (I need to charge for a basic account somehow, otherwise banning cheaters becomes pointless).

Passive

Member

From: England

Registered: 2014-09-18

Posts: 420

Re: Done

I think it was less the app and more my connection. But connection is always going to be more of a risk with mobile devices. However I have found that sometimes I sell things in the app close it then come back and the sale hasnt gone through.

I did a santa run to all as still have app on phone e and work is boring

Last edited by Passive (2014-11-05 23:26:58)

AMWhy

Member

Registered: 2014-02-04

Posts: 435

Re: Done

@Passive, the selling things is an issue with the game, not the app.  On PC, if you sell tools, then view your videos, the tools are unsold again.

Passive

Member

From: England

Registered: 2014-09-18

Posts: 420

Re: Done

@Passive, the selling things is an issue with the game, not the app.  On PC, if you sell tools, then view your videos, the tools are unsold again.

Ok. Never noticed that on the pc. Suppose it is a cheeky undo for mis selling.

voxel

Member

Registered: 2014-08-05

Posts: 84

Re: Done

Oye, sorry to see you go. Hope you do check in and chat from time to time. Going to miss having low value houses brute forced.

I think that if TCD becomes permanently unplayably unpopulated (which might be pretty soon) then someone should just put up a free server for people to play on. But it would easily be less popular than the real thing. For example, I had someone just die in my house with a $50 bounty. A player who hasn't played the game since the start bounty was $50, which appears to be during a small window 9 months ago.

(BTW I feel that even with few houses on the list the game price still isn't bad if you're the obsessive type like we are, who can spend a lot of time on it and get our $15 worth. As someone who arrived recently, it's really a shock to see people 7 months ago already calling the game unplayable due to a low population)

Regarding the death on leaving the house, several times over the last week the server seemed to have gone down for up to several minutes at time; really scary to be robbing a house when that happens! The client is pretty asynchronous and seems to continue running fine when it happens, it just shows some red ... animation in the top right corner. I think it even let me end a self test and continue editing, or vice versa, without a connection to the server.

Also, regarding santa runs, over the course over 24 hours a day ago people did something like 8 of them on my house: gained $18000 of tools. That might be over the top. I didn't actually want the money because my house isn't a proper house, it's just designed for people to play with the circular shift register circuit on the Advanced Electronics page. I think you can guess how many people played with it despite it obviously being part of the puzzle of the house and totally safe. (It amazes me how bad most of the players of this game are!) The money attracted murderous thieves : (. Hey Passive, did you rob the first version of that house? At yet another big loss?

cullman: why would you need to ban cheaters? If the vision is handled server side (which also implies the moves are processed on the server and can't be undone) than it appears to me to be almost impossible to cheat.

Last edited by voxel (2014-11-07 08:43:49)

cullman

Member

Registered: 2014-03-21

Posts: 424

Re: Done

cullman: why would you need to ban cheaters? If the vision is handled server side (which also implies the moves are processed on the server and can't be undone) than it appears to me to be almost impossible to cheat.

I've thought about this, and maybe we will have server side only mode someday, but given that I am likely going to make the game free to play making everything server side will make it more expensive for me to run, and give it worse performance particularly on mobile.  We may eventually have server-side move only tournaments or realms, but right now I think I can eliminate the cheating by keeping it closed source and obfuscating the map code a lot more, and a few things on the server side to look for people who are suspiciously successful.

-cullman