A New House Design Thread

Blip · 2014-01-27 17:12:42

I died like an idiot again, and lost any chance I even remotely had at winning the contest. So I figured I'd post my house design for all to admire! I think a new thread of house designs would be great at educating the influx of new players that are going to come in from Steam and don't know how to build houses as well as us veterans. So feel free to post designs here!

Here is the design: http://castledraft.com/editor/mLJump

The trap is broken up into four parts. The first and largest is situated at the bottom: A player who enters, loses track of where they came from, and sees a dog is forced to make a choice upon an attempt to flee; they often choose wrong and die in an empty hallway. The proper way to solve this is to first get the left dog to chase you (disregarding the dog directly in front of the wife, which is not part of the trap), and to then proceed right. Upon reaching the far right wall, you can head up and use the dogs to press the buttons behind you, allowing you to cross the electric floor and pit and reach the second trap.

The second trap utilizes screen scrolling to its advantage. Stepping more than one square past the trapdoor cause the screen to scroll and bring the pit bull into view, closing the powered door and activating electric floors behind it, thus locking the player in with the angry dog and no way back - the return route is blocked by an electric floor and another pit bull. This trap can be completed by simply hugging the bottom wall and exiting the room via the powered door.

The third trap is the set of four corridors. Going up any of the first three locks you in with a dog, along with breaking the fourth trap. Even if the robber escapes their doggy doom, they have to go through electric floors and then cut through the fourth trap as well, only to be greeted with a safe blocked by pits and no way back. This trap is simple enough to get through; ignore all passages going up and continue on. This trap is just a way to kill off three fourths of the people who get this far - which was only one guy.

The fourth and final trap is a basic magic dance. The combination is simple, take one step back after your third step up, then continue upwards. However, if bypassing this is attempted, by cutting the electric floors, it prevents the final pits from activating when the pit bull steps on the sticky button - again preventing the robber from reaching my safe and forcing him to die, as he can no longer leave.

This is one of my favorite designs, and in its three iterations over three different lives and nearly a week, only one guy reached the vault, and due only to the design not being fully complete (I was missing lots of walls - many were wooden and 1-think). I would recommend it as a good design to get kills, especially those with higher bounties. Many people don't realize that they're walking into a trap, then find themselves unable to leave. The main disadvantage is wife protection; she can only get her gun and a couple pit bulls.

Anyone else have designs to share?

DethBringa · 2014-01-27 17:16:58

OMG I've been in that house! the mass amounts of hallways scared the crap outta me and I had to keep going and and forth to recount the halls so I could find the correct escape route.

Blip · 2014-01-27 18:07:19

I hope that, now that the contest's over, we can see some of the winning designs!

jere · 2014-01-27 18:13:33

Great design Blip!! I think it's brilliant creating a house with an all wood entrance. The robber is thinking they hit gold.

JoeBlow · 2014-01-27 18:16:48

How about some designs for those of us that don't have $100,000? I seem to be a complete failure in making houses for the starting money that can defend anything. I have lost count of the number of interesting designs I have tried and have seen robbed in a trivial manner. ESPECIALLY since you have basically zero money for tools after building.

Last edited by JoeBlow (2014-01-27 18:17:37)

jere · 2014-01-27 18:19:50

Joe, I'd focus on scaring people away instead of having solid security. A dog by the entrance or harmless (but dangerous looking) electric floors will do the trick. Once you have something that will scare people away, go out and get your first robbery. Then fortify. It takes practice but really has little to do with your starting conditions.

iceman · 2014-01-27 18:20:54

Here's my favorite house design, the one that I just ended the contest with. It's still live, so I hid which hallway the safe is in, and I *might* have changed a combo or two, but I want to see how the informed robberies tackle it Once someone's successful, I'll edit this post to go into more detail.

EDIT: Ok, still no successful robberies, but I'll go into depth on my house. Here's the non-edited-for-safety version: http://castledraft.com/editor/zewPy6
And here's the "cheaper" house, that had some features I liked better but had to remove for my wife: http://castledraft.com/editor/l1UoDI
In both cases, the bright blue cross wires are where I could put my safe.

How to Solve
I really liked the cheaper version because it had 3 hiding areas for the safe, each of which had a separate solution. First of all, the obvious, and very well protected, spot - the bottom 4 hallways. To get there, you'd have to go down first, press the right combo to turn off the electric floor trap. Go up, turn off the power to that exceptionally obvious powered door "trap", press the switch behind the power door trap, then turn the power back on, powering the trap door. Then, you could reach the halls safely I actually never really intended keeping my safe here- it was mostly just a money sink for robbers to brute force their way to nothing =P

The combo lock actually had a second, unintended purpose - it hid the true way to turn on the trapdoor. Virtually every robber seemed to think that the trapdoor was powered by the combo lock, and as far as I could tell no-one thought that it was powered from above (although, if you look at it, it's fairly obvious).

The second spot I could hide the safe is inside the "concrete vault" near the top right. Similarly, you'd have to turn the power off to the "obvious trap" (the one right above the dog's powered door). To do that, you'd have to press all of the buttons in the top right, while completing a magic dance to shut the powered door so the dog doesn't eat you. Doing so would open the door to the area below, where you could cut off the power to press the magic switch. (I actually had some smart robbers go to the top right without tools and survive, because they were able to see the dog's switches through the window, but because they didn't "prep" the first two switches, they didn't open the door) Once the doggie commit gate to the vault was powered, simply get the dog to follow you up so you can pass it.

My main hiding place was actually hidden behind an optical illusion (I hoped). In the darkness, and confusion of going around a lot, I hoped that anyone would assume that the 2 doors in the top hallway were the same, so there was no need to cut through there. That dead end room in the top left was created just to explain the gap going up if you see the door from the right (I designed this when people could still see fairly far through walls). To get up there, simply press the middle "trap" switch (it starts out unpowered), then get the dog behind the window to open his door, powering the switch and opening the powered doors in the process. The last trap was the mass of doors with dogs - I'm actually a bit proud of that, as it is a very compact version of "guess the correct door or die!" trap.

The top was where my safe stayed for most of the contest, but once I started doing fairly well, I had quite a few people come awfully close to accidentally discovering the secret entrance, so I decided to move it to the bottom, safest place. That was actually a mistake - when Stewart robbed me, he went straight there, so if I had left my safe in the middle hiding place it would've been safer (I don't know if he would've gone there afterwards, but he would've wasted a lot of money brute forcing the bottom 5 possibilities in my expensive house. I was considering doing it before he robbed me, but only moved it there afterwards. That was the main reason I was soooo nervous during the end of the contest - my safe was fairly safe from brute forcers, but was likely to be found accidentally by suicide robbers. I actually had one power the doggie commit gate safely with a brick - luckily, he didn't take it, instead dying by the top right trap.

If you notice, there's a little, yet ridiculously important, difference between the two versions - there's no power supply in the top left in the expensive house. That got me stuck in one terrifying self test. After a few minutes of furiously thinking, I managed to find a way to get out safely. I'll challenge you to figure out how I got out alive (hint - no-one had robbed me successfully yet).

Traps
My house was full of commit gates and traps - here are most of them

This is a commit gate, although (in my mind) a really sneaky one. The entire room is actually there to plausibly explain the existence of the gap on the right (although I was thinking about hiding my safe in there, as I knew the solution to power the trapdoor). Once you go up the right hallway, the dog sees you across a diagonal, and you're blocked from going back to the entrance unless you brought a club or gun. The best part is, most people don't notice - the screen only changes once you're past where the dog can see you, so when you're going up carefully you can't see him, but when you're coming down quickly you don't notice that you saw a dog just before the screen changed.

Another version of a hidden commit gate - if you move into the top hallway, once you pass the window, the dog will follow you, opening the powered door and cutting off your escape.

Trap on 2 levels - if you just go straight up, the chihuahua sees you and presses the button to fry you. I had a couple of people think ahead, though, and try to cut the wired wooden wall. Doing that actually cuts off the power to the voltage switch, which means the electric floors turn on, instantly frying you.

Very similar, but with a key difference - this time, power comes through the entrance of the trap instead of the end. This means that cutting the walls is perfectly safe, since it cuts off where the power comes from (hence why there's 4 wired walls instead of 1). However, if you're planning on just using wire cutters in front of you when the chihuahua sees you, you're instantly fried from behind (doing so in the previous trap would be safe).

This was an interesting trap - it's such an obvious one! I figured that, if someone got here, they'd know about the subtleties of power being cut off. To them, it would be an obvious attempt to scare people off, but a fake threat. If I had wired it like this, they'd be right - pressing the switch would actually turn OFF the power instead of turning everything on. Since it WASN'T, if they tried to pass without water, they'd die.

Eh, who am I kidding - all of those traps together didn't get as many kills as this little beauty. This is the one I'm proudest of - I mean, who would expect that stepping on one of these when there's no way to power it would actually KILL you??!?!?! Mindblowing, I tell you!

Last edited by iceman (2014-01-27 21:51:11)

JoeBlow · 2014-01-27 18:22:14

Yeah I've tried that too. Maybe this just isn't the game for me. I dumped all my money into backpack equip only have it lost every single time. I think I did one successful robbery at a monetary loss because I didn't know the wife carried half the listed loot.

SnakeAes · 2014-01-27 18:26:17

iceman, this seems like an incredibly newbish and uneducated question, and maybe because it's Monday at the end of the work day, but how the crap did that house ever pass self-test? The trap-door/electric floor combo at the entrance seems impossible.

Last edited by SnakeAes (2014-01-27 18:26:44)

DethBringa · 2014-01-27 18:26:43

I have seen that battery-switch-electric floor-trapdoor before... I cant for the life of me work out how on earth you could ever get past it.

Blip · 2014-01-27 18:27:48

The god follows you, two steps behind you, and lets you pass the trap.

Edit: You know, I meant to say "dog", but that turned out so perfectly that I don't want to change it.

Last edited by Blip (2014-01-27 18:28:30)

SnakeAes · 2014-01-27 18:28:55

That's fucking brilliant.

ventuswings · 2014-01-27 18:29:02

DethBringa wrote:

I have seen that battery-switch-electric floor-trapdoor before... I cant for the life of me work out how on earth you could ever get past it.

Go directly to the switch to turn it on, take one step back, charge forward trusting in the power of the dog.

iceman · 2014-01-27 18:29:32

SnakeAes wrote:

iceman, this seems like an incredibly newbish and uneducated question, and maybe because it's Monday at the end of the work day, but how the crap did that house ever pass self-test? The trap-door/electric floor combo at the entrance seems impossible.

If you have a dog following you, you can do a "leap of faith" onto the trapdoor when it's open, and the dog will turn on the power that step, saving you. I stole it from other houses I've seen before the contest

EDIT: Triple ninja'd?!?!

Last edited by iceman (2014-01-27 18:29:57)

DethBringa · 2014-01-27 18:30:38

I thought that but you move first, then animals, the electric circuits... If you are standing on the electric floor (obviously off) and you move to the trapdoor (off) you die before the dog can move and before the power can turn on the floor. At least thats the understanding I have.

ukuko · 2014-01-27 18:31:56

Yeah but it checks if you're alive or dead after all of that.

ventuswings · 2014-01-27 18:32:32

I've run into battery-switch-electric floor-trapdoor several times, and love the ingenuity of it since first impulse of the robber upon seeing the dog is to drug it immediately before the dog moves into inconvenient position. So it combines with other mechanisms absurdly well. In one of the robberies, had safe just two squares away from me but had to suicide because of that accursed combination.

I really should incorporate it into my design as well after my current house falls.

Last edited by ventuswings (2014-01-27 18:34:09)

SnakeAes · 2014-01-27 18:37:35

DethBringa wrote:

I thought that but you move first, then animals, the electric circuits... If you are standing on the electric floor (obviously off) and you move to the trapdoor (off) you die before the dog can move and before the power can turn on the floor. At least thats the understanding I have.

That's the understanding I had too, but... apparently not? Wonder if Jason can comment on this.

SnakeAes · 2014-01-27 18:39:13

Blip and Iceman, now that you guys have shared your designs with us, do you mind if I post some of them in the Meta-Game and Trap Mechanics thread? Since they're already here for people to see I assume that you don't mind but I wanted to get permission from you folks first.

Blip · 2014-01-27 18:39:44

SnakeAes wrote:

Blip and Iceman, now that you guys have shared your designs with us, do you mind if I post some of them in the Meta-Game and Trap Mechanics thread? Since they're already here for people to see I assume that you don't mind but I wanted to get permission from you folks first.

Yeah, feel free to do so.

iceman · 2014-01-27 18:48:25

SnakeAes wrote:

Blip and Iceman, now that you guys have shared your designs with us, do you mind if I post some of them in the Meta-Game and Trap Mechanics thread? Since they're already here for people to see I assume that you don't mind but I wanted to get permission from you folks first.

Once I have time I'll post a couple there with a good explanation of the individual traps - I just can't go into detail right now. If you really want to, you can do it yourself, but just be aware that I'll try to do it soon.

Last edited by iceman (2014-01-27 18:49:16)

jere · 2014-01-27 19:17:57

JOHN ROBERT CARPENTER $120000

http://castledraft.com/editor/QnRB4T

It's actually fairly simple to get in. Walk back in and out of the doorway after your first step, then take the 3rd door on the bottom, then go straight to the exit.

My favorite part is the upper left. That's a goldmine of a design. I had dozens of people fall for it just in the last few hours. You can make it a lot simpler, but I have the current setup to prevent people bricking the chihuahuas.

I was surprised I kept my wife alive the whole time. I could have enhanced the family security, but I needed to leave it open for the upper left part. Anyone could have taken over $50k for just $8k.

Enjoy!

Last edited by jere (2014-01-27 19:21:21)

joshwithguitar · 2014-01-27 19:31:16

Jere: I got close to robbing carpenter early on, though I think you cottoned on and locked me out before I could come back with a truckload of saws.,

Last edited by joshwithguitar (2014-01-27 19:31:47)

jere · 2014-01-27 19:44:58

Did you have a duplicate account? Never saw Stewart, but did see a MICHAEL MARK HUDSON furiously beating down my door. If so, you came really close and I realized I had to step up my game.

It was a tradeoff between continuing to go for bounties (making the place look friendly) and beefing up security. At that point though, I knew I was a target.

Edit: Heh. The map is posted right here, but I keep getting bounties.

Last edited by jere (2014-01-27 19:46:25)

Binger32 · 2014-01-27 20:27:53

I had success this past weekend utilizing a combo lock with sticky pads for the input. Can be built with the starter 2k(but almost NO cash for tools) and quite effective when used in tandem with multiple commit gates(getting more cash from robberies). I had two upon entering, one more subtle then the other.

Upon entering, a closed powered door to the south, and an empty hallway to the north. Upon going north about 4-5 steps, my family would have seen you, stepping on a panic button in the next two steps, releasing the pitbulls from their powered doors by the entrance. To the north of the family hallway a standard powered door/electric grate gate. After that, it was just guess the right door/gate to the combo lock, and if you chose the wrong path(Pitbull maze) all the other doors on the gates would essentially seal you in the maze till you broke out or met your doom.

Only about 5-6 people made it to the combo room, and none even came close to breaking in. My tip to anyone if do utilize a combo lock, keep those wired wooden walls a big as possible

Also, I only started playing a few days ago(thursday-friday). Glad to be here, and I love the other houses posted before. I am pretty sure I was in Carpenters house. If I knew it was that easy, I would have gone for it Will be adding some of these ideas into my house designs in the future.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-01-27 17:12:42

A New House Design Thread

#2 2014-01-27 17:16:58

Re: A New House Design Thread

#3 2014-01-27 18:07:19

Re: A New House Design Thread

#4 2014-01-27 18:13:33

Re: A New House Design Thread

#5 2014-01-27 18:16:48

Re: A New House Design Thread

#6 2014-01-27 18:19:50

Re: A New House Design Thread

#7 2014-01-27 18:20:54

Re: A New House Design Thread

#8 2014-01-27 18:22:14

Re: A New House Design Thread

#9 2014-01-27 18:26:17

Re: A New House Design Thread

#10 2014-01-27 18:26:43

Re: A New House Design Thread

#11 2014-01-27 18:27:48

Re: A New House Design Thread

#12 2014-01-27 18:28:55

Re: A New House Design Thread

#13 2014-01-27 18:29:02

Re: A New House Design Thread

#14 2014-01-27 18:29:32

Re: A New House Design Thread

#15 2014-01-27 18:30:38

Re: A New House Design Thread

#16 2014-01-27 18:31:56

Re: A New House Design Thread

#17 2014-01-27 18:32:32

Re: A New House Design Thread

#18 2014-01-27 18:37:35

Re: A New House Design Thread

#19 2014-01-27 18:39:13

Re: A New House Design Thread

#20 2014-01-27 18:39:44

Re: A New House Design Thread

#21 2014-01-27 18:48:25

Re: A New House Design Thread

#22 2014-01-27 19:17:57

Re: A New House Design Thread

#23 2014-01-27 19:31:16

Re: A New House Design Thread

#24 2014-01-27 19:44:58

Re: A New House Design Thread

#25 2014-01-27 20:27:53

Re: A New House Design Thread

Board footer