[suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

Gopher · 2014-02-11 20:16:51

New to this game, only been at it for a couple of days now, and so far I've been fine at managing the frustration that naturally comes with this kind of permadeath game, but just did something I haven't done since my first few hours, died during a self-test, and in this case I find myself quite a bit more frustrated than any of my many prior deaths. The reason is that I have no idea what went wrong.

Just before this test, I'd done a couple of self-tests with all but the last trap - a newly-installed trapdoor - replaced with safe alternatives (grids->lights, pit bull->chihuahuas), so I could make sure the trap door was working as intended in all cases. Having so verified, I walked back out, replaced the pit bulls and electric floors, and did the final self-test to put the house back on the burglary market, only to get to the end and find the trap door did /not/ work properly, forcing me to suicide.

Now, I'm sure I must've done something wrong, but for the life of me, I can't figure what it could be. I had literally just done the exact same walk through twice.

It wouldn't really change the game in any substantial way, and in this instance would have eased my mind immensely, if I could watch a security tape of my own suicidal run and see exactly what stupid thing I just did. Obviously you can't allow this for deaths during proper robberies, but after failed self-tests, I see benefit and no harm in having the replay available.

sebastian · 2014-02-11 20:22:20

Good idea. A nice thing would be have to list every self-test (completed) in the security tapes, so you can Watch yourself complete the self-test, but then also verify that the traps work. (since when you self-test, you only verify that the traps does not work for you), but you want to know that they work when a burgular comes.

arakira · 2014-02-11 20:22:58

This will not help you get the tape, but for your next self-test, replace the trapdoors with non conducting lights (the green ones). Much less deadly...

Gopher · 2014-02-11 20:28:12

arakira, yeah, this is the infuriating thing in this case for me - I had just done multiple self-tests, and afaik, between those and the last one that I died on, I had changed nothing except switching the conductive lights back to electrified floors. I know I either accidentally changed something, or took a misstep in a magic dance, or something. Knowing exactly what I did wouldn't undo it, but not knowing what I did is driving me nuts, adding insult to self-injury XD

iceman · 2014-02-11 21:00:44

You can always watch the recordedGame file - simply drag it into the playbackGames folder in the CastleDoctrine folder. It'll have everything you did in there, including whatever house edit went wrong.

Gopher · 2014-02-11 21:08:33

Haroo? I was unaware of this possibility. Off to attempt it now, tentative thanks...
:edit: oh gawd. Gonna have to see if I can manually pare down this file, unless there are some fastforward options I'm not seeing, game had been running continuously without me exiting for a couple of days, lol. But thanks regardless

Last edited by Gopher (2014-02-11 21:15:42)

Pandamonium · 2014-02-11 21:12:29

iceman wrote:

You can always watch the recordedGame file - simply drag it into the playbackGames folder in the CastleDoctrine folder. It'll have everything you did in there, including whatever house edit went wrong.

This... works???

Gopher · 2014-02-11 21:20:11

seems like it, but it's a single session file for however long the game has been running; my current one is 70 megs, the overwhelming majority of that lines of "0" meaning, I assume, "nothing happened"

doubly glad I've discovered this is happening, seems there /is/ a reason to quit the game when afk rather than just leaving it idling in the background, lol

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-12 01:23:28

You can adjust the speed of playback by changing the "enableSpeedControlKeys" flag in the settings folder to 1. This allows you to use the ^&*() buttons to adjust the speed - ^ is very slow, & is normal speed and ) is as fast as possible.

Also, one thing you can always do is to take a full map shot by pressing '+' before doing the final self test. This will allow you to look back over the house that killed you and figure out what went wrong.

One thing you have to watch out for is that lights won't kill pets the same way that active wires and pits will and so things can happen differently even if you replace things perfectly. I've died a number of times because I didn't take into account pet deaths and things didn't work out as expected.

Gopher · 2014-02-12 01:40:01

joshwithguitar wrote:

You can adjust the speed of playback by changing the "enableSpeedControlKeys" flag in the settings folder to 1. This allows you to use the ^&*() buttons to adjust the speed - ^ is very slow, & is normal speed and ) is as fast as possible.

Excellent, ty. I'm doubtful it'd be much help with the nearly 48 hour playback file I wound up with, but will be helpful in the future.

Pandamonium · 2014-02-18 01:12:02

joshwithguitar wrote:

You can adjust the speed of playback by changing the "enableSpeedControlKeys" flag in the settings folder to 1. This allows you to use the ^&*() buttons to adjust the speed - ^ is very slow, & is normal speed and ) is as fast as possible.

Doesn't do anything for me.
(running via steam)

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-18 06:34:22

Pandamonium wrote:

joshwithguitar wrote:
You can adjust the speed of playback by changing the "enableSpeedControlKeys" flag in the settings folder to 1. This allows you to use the ^&*() buttons to adjust the speed - ^ is very slow, & is normal speed and ) is as fast as possible.
Doesn't do anything for me.
(running via steam)

Odd... the maximum speed is not particularly fast, especially on a slow laptop - did you try pressing the ^ button to see if it slows right down? I guess all I can say otherwise is to double check the enableSpeedControlKeys file, but I'm guessing you've already done that.

colorfusion · 2014-02-18 06:55:48

I've been having the same problem as Pandamonium, thought it was just something I was doing wrong. ^ and & work, but it won't speed up.

Last edited by colorfusion (2014-02-18 06:55:55)

arakira · 2014-02-19 06:15:52

Pandamonium wrote:

joshwithguitar wrote:
You can adjust the speed of playback by changing the "enableSpeedControlKeys" flag in the settings folder to 1. This allows you to use the ^&*() buttons to adjust the speed - ^ is very slow, & is normal speed and ) is as fast as possible.
Doesn't do anything for me.

For me neither, because I have a Mac keyboard. I think these mappings are hardcoded, so the layout may vary (or simply not work) depending on your keyboard. Good luck

Last edited by arakira (2014-02-19 06:16:59)

colorfusion · 2014-02-19 06:47:59

arakira wrote:

Pandamonium wrote:
joshwithguitar wrote:
You can adjust the speed of playback by changing the "enableSpeedControlKeys" flag in the settings folder to 1. This allows you to use the ^&*() buttons to adjust the speed - ^ is very slow, & is normal speed and ) is as fast as possible.
Doesn't do anything for me.
For me neither, because I have a Mac keyboard. I think these mappings are hardcoded, so the layout may vary (or simply not work) depending on your keyboard. Good luck

That could explain it; I've got a British English keyboard.

Last edited by colorfusion (2014-02-19 06:48:21)

jasonrohrer · 2014-02-19 13:03:57

I doubt its the keyboard in the case of the British English one.

On Linux, open GL defaults to some kind of vsync for frame updates, which prevents frames from being drawn any faster than your refresh rate. This may be true on some other platforms as well.

So, on Linux, the fix for this is invoking the game this way on the command line:

vblank_mode=0 ./CastleDoctrineApp

This lets the frame rate fly free of the vlbank interval. I regularly see 150 FPS during recordedGame playback if I do this. It also helps to drag the window mostly off the screen (so only a corner is showing) because then the whole screen isn't drawn (not sure how this works exactly, but it works).

Finally, I've had SOME luck running a search-and replace for long columns of all "0" in the recording file and simply removing them. But you need to be careful doing this, because sometimes several "0" lines are actually part of a web response from the server. Also, it may screw up timing somehow (though the recordedGame files actually record time() values, so it shouldn't).

In general, the recordedGames are still a bit fragile.... For very long recordings (like days) they usually end up breaking and falling out of synch for mysterious reasons by the end when you try to play them back.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-02-11 20:16:51

[suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#2 2014-02-11 20:22:20

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#3 2014-02-11 20:22:58

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#4 2014-02-11 20:28:12

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#5 2014-02-11 21:00:44

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#6 2014-02-11 21:08:33

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#7 2014-02-11 21:12:29

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#8 2014-02-11 21:20:11

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#9 2014-02-12 01:23:28

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#10 2014-02-12 01:40:01

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#11 2014-02-18 01:12:02

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#12 2014-02-18 06:34:22

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#13 2014-02-18 06:55:48

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#14 2014-02-19 06:15:52

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#15 2014-02-19 06:47:59

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

#16 2014-02-19 13:03:57

Re: [suggestion] self-test suicide post-review

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