Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

Blip · 2014-02-18 19:54:59

jere wrote:

I robbed an 11k house to make one of these exploit houses. I know it'll be patched soon, but I really want to see how confused someone gets.

You built a legitimate trap using this design? It seems like the only possibility for use with a normal house (to me) is forcing somebody to use a crowbar, but that can already be done pretty well with a cat.

iceman · 2014-02-18 19:55:10

MMaster wrote:

iceman wrote:
I think that the solution that was mentioned near the beginning, to check electronic loops locally, is the cleanest one. It takes away the main purpose to abuse the electronic system, and it fixes most of the "directly connected to power but unpowered" problem.
What happens with circuit that hit 32 substeps? And what happens when that circuit is connected to otherwise disconnected section of house by pressing a button? Cannot it still be somehow abused?

It can be abused, but I can't think of any instance where it's advantageous. Take this case, for instance:

http://castledraft.com/editor/5Hhw01

In this case, even though the pit is directly connected to power, since it's connected to a > 32 period circuit, it never powers up (because of this part of the system). When you press the button, it is no longer connected, so power works normally, the pit opens. Even if you press the button again, since the pit starts off powered, it will stay powered.

Look at this house now:
http://castledraft.com/editor/hbQjsQ
It does the exact same thing, *but* it takes up a LOT less space, and it's much more secure. In the first example, if you cut the powered walls, the pit is disconnected from the circuit, and it opens - $400 and no scouting. The only reason for using the first one is to confuse people, and that's a tiny advantage compared to the disadvantages.

Ok, as I was writing, I thought of 1 case where it could be profitable:
http://castledraft.com/editor/Jv9Xkp
When people enter the hallway from the left, the pit to the right is a dead end when it *really* doesn't look like it (unless you pressed the button). This would be solved by a purge though. If the purge is 1 step, this layout would work exactly the same, but it's already looking a bit suspicious. If the purge lasts more steps, it quickly becomes unpractical to use that trap, both because of size and because it loses its (apparant) simplicity.

So, my opinions are pretty much the same as josh's now. Make electronic loops local and add a purge - 8 steps would be enough, I think. I'm not sure increasing the step limit is necessary, though- it could affect older computers' performance, and it only serves to make limit-passing circuits more inconvenient, while I think they'd already be inconvenient enough.

I also think we need a good name for limit-breaking circuits... singularity circuits?

Last edited by iceman (2014-02-18 19:56:19)

iceman · 2014-02-18 20:01:49

Blip wrote:

jere wrote:
I robbed an 11k house to make one of these exploit houses. I know it'll be patched soon, but I really want to see how confused someone gets.
You built a legitimate trap using this design? It seems like the only possibility for use with a normal house (to me) is forcing somebody to use a crowbar, but that can already be done pretty well with a cat.

The thing is, a cat lets you know that *something* changed. In the house from your (very cheeky ) signature, people will know that something *could* be behind that door. In my example house, there's no way to open that door (by the old rules), so there's no way something could be in there - thus, people probably aren't going to brute force there.

Also, you can make fun, logic defying traps that don't power when they should - see my previous post for an example.

Blip · 2014-02-18 20:11:33

iceman wrote:

Also, you can make fun, logic defying traps that don't power when they should - see my previous post for an example.

Yeah, those are actually pretty cool. Of course, for the second example, most people would drug the dog anyway at first sight, and then realize that the pit trap was messed up. If that was me, though, I would get the hell out of there and never come back... seeing this stuff put into practice would be really, really scary. I've been trying a pure-building life right now, and haven't had a peek at the top houses for a while, so for all I know, this has become the standard. For the sake of the newbies who don't know what they're doing, I hope its not.

jere · 2014-02-18 20:21:29

Well, this guy is having a bad day.

iceman · 2014-02-18 22:07:56

jere wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/I9hNPls.png
Well, this guy is having a bad day.

Be prepared for floods of threads saying "James Michael Ernest's house is bugged!!!!! (which, I suppose, it is XD (just a random name I picked, fyi) )

This gives me an idea... what if we kept *everything* the same way it is now, but have a new item that we can place on empty floors, called a Paradox Detector. If there's a loop in the house that exceeds 32 steps, it lights up, so you know electronics won't quite work the same way. If it's not lit up, you can expect a normal house (until you press a button).

I'm just trying to think of ways to keep wireless communication in the game

Also, another fun house idea - have a wireless reciever plugged into a looooooong hallway of powered doors. In the middle of the hallway, place an innocuous little circuit with a button and that's not connected to anything.. but it just happens to be the trigger for wireless transmission. People who are curious or just like to have fun pressing useless buttons, press the button...

And then the dogs pour in.

Last edited by iceman (2014-02-18 22:11:10)

LiteS · 2014-02-18 23:02:16

jere wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/I9hNPls.png
Well, this guy is having a bad day.

Oh come on, that's just mean. This stuff really isn't helping the ragequit factor.

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-18 23:15:55

jere wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/I9hNPls.png
Well, this guy is having a bad day.

What have we unleashed...

cartti · 2014-02-19 00:35:35

jere wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/I9hNPls.png
Well, this guy is having a bad day.

This is just plain stupid. Nothing personal ofc, but from now on i'm not going to visit any house before this is fixed..

MMaster · 2014-02-19 01:17:00

MMaster wrote:

EDIT: How about disabling the component that triggered the event where more than 32 substeps are needed? If that would happen at the beginning the house would be refused to be self-tested. If that would happen during robbery, you can cache electronics components that changed state during last turn and as soon as you find out that > 32 substeps are needed just reset those electronic components back to state where they were before and stuck them at that state and do the computations again.
This would stop clocks working after trying to trigger the breaker but there are much easier ways to do that. Maybe you would be able to make unpressable button, but the doors that are supposed to be closed would be closed unless connected to the circuit somehow.

Just bumping my own stuff - Isn't this the way to localize the misuse of the breaker? No special detection is required and it will actually solve the problem. Even if there would be some magic to find out localized circuits the ones where there are more than 32 steps would be glitched so the result would be very similar. Using this even connected circuits will work without problems. Can someone see any way to abuse this?

EDIT: It's quite easy code change and I can probably even make a PoC code for this if someone would be interested to test it.

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-19 01:40:25)

arakira · 2014-02-19 05:27:05

iceman wrote:

If the purge is 1 step, this layout would work exactly the same

It wouldn't work the same, because as soon as you stand on the welcome mat, power would trigger the Voltage-Triggered Switch at the top (sub-step 1). This VTS would then be powered for all sub-steps, and in turn would stay powered for all following steps.
Actually, removing the 0-th sub-step (or, equivalently, setting the purge counter to 1) would mean that your n-th step from the welcome mat would "resolve" any (n+1) cascade delay VTSs connected to a singularity circuit. Maybe one way to exploit it (if it is possible?) would be with a trap very close to the entrance.
In any case, this 0-th sub-step is like the 0-th index of an array whose valuable information starts at index 1.

Last edited by arakira (2014-02-19 06:43:13)

Hippasus · 2014-02-19 06:01:36

Ok, lets start from the beginning.
Does Jason NEED to stop wireless communication? Obviously some of the more glitchy aspects thereof would need fixing. Power sources should propagate power all of the time regardless of other aspects of the houses electronics for instance. but once those 'bugs' are removed (and that can easily be done by purging the first few cycles) is what remains so unpalatable?

I suppose two separate arguments could be made against wireless communication in TCD:

1. That it is game breaking. OP!
I'm not too concerned about this. If it is too effective you can increase the amount of purged cycles, that in turn will increase the size of the transmitter and receiver. You can continue increasing the amount of purged cycles until the benefits of home wi-fi are balanced by its cumbersomeness.

2. That it is just plain clumsy, arbitrary, anti-intuitive.
This one is more difficult and I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this. I think the fact that the cycle limit is arbitrary should not concern us too much though. Physics are arbitrary. Many of the aspects we use in house design: view shifts, pet movement, paradoxes resolving to off etc. are all arbitrary. This can be difficult for new players, but to a certain extent the game is meant to be difficult for new players. In many regards it is these anti-intuitive aspects of the game that give it depth. If everything worked just like we thought it did then we would be certain about the risks we are taking. I'm much more interested in the risk of the unknown, the emergent dynamic I am as of yet unaware of. If we simply cull every unexpected dynamic as it is discovered the game will lose quite a lot.

But yes I can also see the other side. A bunch of separate circuits each invisibly acting on the other over a distance to form some 'critical mass' at which electronics in the area act subtly differently so that invisible and occult conjunction can be detected by a receiver. It's all a bit weird. Weird in a sci-fi kind of way not a murder-each-others-children-home-defence-MMO kind of way. Weird in a way that perhaps is just too weird. It isn't a game about an alien electrician after all.

Perhaps though the solution is quite simple. Don't bother with wiping out the dynamic completely, just make it almost entirely impractical to implement by making the number of purged cycles relatively high. It is a very simple solution that would stop this dynamic from wrecking the game by making its implementation prohibitively space consuming while also giving us electronics nerds something fun to play with in our spare time. Perhaps it would even be possible to make a few one-trick-pony houses that use it, but never in such a way that it would become a dominant strategy. This would discount the need for a massive revamp of the electronics system. And if it didn't work as a measure you could always do something more drastic.

The game is running great as it is Jason, I'm not sure it is timely or necessary to have too much of a paradigm shift on electronics.
You don't want to kill the worm with a can of worms.

jere · 2014-02-19 08:08:10

This one is more difficult and I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this. I think the fact that the cycle limit is arbitrary should not concern us too much though. Physics are arbitrary.

I totally disagree. The rules in this game are, in all other instances, fairly straightforward. While people struggle with electronics, it actually presents a very simple and consistent universe to play in. I found wiring here to be an order of magnitude easier than in Minecraft. To put it another way, physics might be arbitrary, but in the real world we build logic components that abstract most of that way and allow you to ignore the underlying physics.

The whole sub step thing and wireless power completely breaks down that simplicity and consistency. People should be able to get by on understanding the basic functionality of each component and not having to read the source code.

Oh come on, that's just mean. This stuff really isn't helping the ragequit factor.

This is just plain stupid. Nothing personal ofc, but from now on i'm not going to visit any house before this is fixed..

Here's the thing. Jason is going to have to patch this. And it's going to be a major release for what appears to be an obscure bug. I imagine a neighborhood reset will be needed because the rules will have changed.

All in all, people are going to want some justification. Ah, but what if the bug was actually being exploited! People would see it and demand a fix.

So there's that and, yea, I'm a bastard for enjoying this.

MMaster · 2014-02-19 08:22:29

jere wrote:

The whole sub step thing and wireless power completely breaks down that simplicity and consistency. People should be able to get by on understanding the basic functionality of each component and not having to read the source code.

I think substeps are completely understandable and consistent unless you hit the limit which is high enough to not be hit by accident. Without substeps electronics would be easy to understand, but hard to use for any advanced electronics, or on the other side very easy to use for advanced electronics like clocks. I think one of the entertaining things about this game is finding out more and more stuff that can be done and the more you play the more you learn. Giving everything on a clean plate to the players takes away part of the fun in discovering the game mechanics.

jere wrote:

Here's the thing. Jason is going to have to patch this. And it's going to be a major release for what appears to be an obscure bug. I imagine a neighborhood reset will be needed because the rules will have changed.

That depends on the way how will he fix it. If the fix would just make wireless transfer impossible/impractical and everything else would work like today then nothing would need to change as the only thing that would be influenced by the fix would be the breaker circuit or circuits that span for more than 32 substeps. We want to get rid of breaker. Circuits that need more than 32 substeps are not usable even today and it was good enough until now.

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-19 08:23:46)

jere · 2014-02-19 08:28:56

I think one of the entertaining things about this game is finding out more and more stuff that can be done and the more you play the more you learn. Giving everything on a clean plate to the players takes away part of the fun in discovering the game mechanics.

Yea, tell that to the people coming into my house. They don't learn the trick in my house and they don't have a hope of trying it in their own without some help. They have no route to learning how this works and I don't think we should expect them to either.

Hippasus · 2014-02-19 08:32:00

Your house is exploiting a very specific and obnoxious bug jere. It could easily be fixed without a 'major release' by purging the first few cycles. It's more of an open question if the more subtle ramifications of the cycle limit could be exploited so easily.

My challenge to anybody, especially jere, is to come up with something blatantly exploitive that could still be implemented with a decent amount of purged cycles. If somebody can come up with that I will gladly accept that something more drastic needs to be implemented. Until then I remain unconvinced.

MMaster · 2014-02-19 08:44:36

jere wrote:

I think one of the entertaining things about this game is finding out more and more stuff that can be done and the more you play the more you learn. Giving everything on a clean plate to the players takes away part of the fun in discovering the game mechanics.
Yea, tell that to the people coming into my house. They don't learn the trick in my house and they don't have a hope of trying it in their own without some help. They have no route to learning how this works and I don't think we should expect them to either.

When I played minecraft I had no idea how people do thousands of things and the game didn't tell me and it still doesn't. In that case the key is community and I think this game has great community. We have nice wiki, castledraft, lots of posts on forums explaining all of the things (and I thank you all for that - it's great). The game is about making traps where you have to think, nobody will tell you all the possible traps that you can make as that would make the game boring.
I think it's just the question what kind of game Castle Doctrine wants to be and what is the target audience for it. You can't make game for everyone (unless you make Angry Birds ).

cartti · 2014-02-19 09:13:13

MMaster wrote:

jere wrote:
I think one of the entertaining things about this game is finding out more and more stuff that can be done and the more you play the more you learn. Giving everything on a clean plate to the players takes away part of the fun in discovering the game mechanics.
Yea, tell that to the people coming into my house. They don't learn the trick in my house and they don't have a hope of trying it in their own without some help. They have no route to learning how this works and I don't think we should expect them to either.
When I played minecraft I had no idea how people do thousands of things and the game didn't tell me and it still doesn't. In that case the key is community and I think this game has great community. We have nice wiki, castledraft, lots of posts on forums explaining all of the things (and I thank you all for that - it's great). The game is about making traps where you have to think, nobody will tell you all the possible traps that you can make as that would make the game boring.
I think it's just the question what kind of game Castle Doctrine wants to be and what is the target audience for it. You can't make game for everyone (unless you make Angry Birds ).

The problem here is not the wireless stuff or learning what you can do and what not. Yeah i would love to see wireless stuff, but then it would have to be usable item - transmitter tile and receiver tile. The example Jere used is just plain and simple cheat. There is absolutely no logic. Just a "feature" abused while player believes in rules that has been presented to them on wiki. Imagine an empty floor tile sprite that is actually a pit. Player moves over it, falls through concrete floor and dies. This is exactly that.

..Or you can update wiki to say that you can't believe anything you see anymore. Oh.. But thats a complete different story called Matrix.

MMaster · 2014-02-19 09:24:50

cartti wrote:

MMaster wrote:
jere wrote:
Yea, tell that to the people coming into my house. They don't learn the trick in my house and they don't have a hope of trying it in their own without some help. They have no route to learning how this works and I don't think we should expect them to either.
When I played minecraft I had no idea how people do thousands of things and the game didn't tell me and it still doesn't. In that case the key is community and I think this game has great community. We have nice wiki, castledraft, lots of posts on forums explaining all of the things (and I thank you all for that - it's great). The game is about making traps where you have to think, nobody will tell you all the possible traps that you can make as that would make the game boring.
I think it's just the question what kind of game Castle Doctrine wants to be and what is the target audience for it. You can't make game for everyone (unless you make Angry Birds ).
The problem here is not the wireless stuff or learning what you can do and what not. Yeah i would love to see wireless stuff, but then it would have to be usable item - transmitter tile and receiver tile. The example Jere used is just plain and simple cheat. There is absolutely no logic. Just a "feature" abused while player believes in rules that has been presented to them on wiki. Imagine an empty floor tile sprite that is actually a pit. Player moves over it, falls through concrete floor and dies. This is exactly that.
..Or you can update wiki to say that you can't believe anything you see anymore. Oh.. But thats a complete different story called Matrix.

I'm not sure I understood what you wanted to say. The problem is not wireless stuff, but problem is that Jere used it?

I think we all agree that breaker circuit is not fine for this game, but that does not mean that we also need to remove all substeps stuff. I thought that's what Jere was saying in post before - that substeps are hard to understand for new people.

jere wrote:

The whole sub step thing and wireless power completely breaks down that simplicity and consistency. People should be able to get by on understanding the basic functionality of each component and not having to read the source code.

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-19 09:28:37)

jere · 2014-02-19 09:29:47

Purging alone may be enough to fix it. I don't know. I haven't studied this stuff like some of ya'll have.

But that's still a release. And I don't know if adding purging affects the way any houses work..... if so, you'd need a reset.

Substeps are confusing. Anyone who disagrees is, I think, quite out of touch with how the average player approaches this game. There's no way to see them happening visually in the game and no one way to know they even exist without reading about them externally. Still, keeping substeps and adding a purge may be the best option on the table.

iceman · 2014-02-19 09:30:16

cartti wrote:

..Or you can update wiki to say that you can't believe anything you see anymore. Oh.. But thats a complete different story called Matrix.

http://castledraft.com/editor/Ub7pn2

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue hall - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red hall - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

jere · 2014-02-19 09:35:21

LOL

cartti · 2014-02-19 09:38:11

MMaster wrote:

I'm not sure I understood what you wanted to say. The problem is not wireless stuff, but problem is that Jere used it?

No. Problem is the fact that you can see whole circuit there and as the game rules stand by now circuit should power up those trap doors. If there would be like i said a wireless receiver tile between power source and everything else - yeah it would be ok as player could suspect it might do something unexpected.

MMaster · 2014-02-19 09:48:50

cartti wrote:

MMaster wrote:
I'm not sure I understood what you wanted to say. The problem is not wireless stuff, but problem is that Jere used it?
No. Problem is the fact that you can see whole circuit there and as the game rules stand by now circuit should power up those trap doors. If there would be like i said a wireless receiver tile between power source and everything else - yeah it would be ok as player could suspect it might do something unexpected.

Right. That is the problem that needs to be solved and that is why this whole discussion is happening :-)

LiteS · 2014-02-19 11:24:07

I really only have two questions about a fix.

Will it break this trap, in which if the robber cuts the wall, it will activate the floor?

Will it break the current implementation of clocks?

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#76 2014-02-18 19:54:59

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#77 2014-02-18 19:55:10

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#78 2014-02-18 20:01:49

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#79 2014-02-18 20:11:33

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#80 2014-02-18 20:21:29

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#81 2014-02-18 22:07:56

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#82 2014-02-18 23:02:16

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#83 2014-02-18 23:15:55

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#84 2014-02-19 00:35:35

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#85 2014-02-19 01:17:00

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#86 2014-02-19 05:27:05

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#87 2014-02-19 06:01:36

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#88 2014-02-19 08:08:10

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#89 2014-02-19 08:22:29

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#90 2014-02-19 08:28:56

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#91 2014-02-19 08:32:00

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#92 2014-02-19 08:44:36

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#93 2014-02-19 09:13:13

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#94 2014-02-19 09:24:50

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#95 2014-02-19 09:29:47

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#96 2014-02-19 09:30:16

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#97 2014-02-19 09:35:21

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#98 2014-02-19 09:38:11

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#99 2014-02-19 09:48:50

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

#100 2014-02-19 11:24:07

Re: Wireless transmission and Step-limit exploits

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