a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I don't think restrictive ideas are the way in this case.
How about implementing something like leaderboards for average lineage depth and average lifespan. /die effectively removes you from the competition (maybe your worst 10% of lives don't count to offset griefing or gives you an occasional out).
Also some cosmetic bonuses would be cool. You could give freckles or a birthmark to the best players to distinguish them. Maybe also make a milestone for the ability to craft unique items after a certain amount of grinding (Miner's hat for mining/collecting ore, Blacksmith's apron for doing forge tasks, mayor's sash for doing a little bit of everything). If people are actively working towards a milestone they are less likely to suicide I would imagine.
v59 server is up, crosslinking this post with instructions on getting set up:
Our town is just north of spawn, the tech tree is still very similar with a few small changes. We worked through most of it, so I could change the default spawn location if someone else wants to start from scratch.
I worked with Jason to set up the time machine server running v59 of One Hour One Life.
The clients to connect are located here:
Windows
Linux
Mac
I tested the Windows client and it works well, Linux should be good to go also.
For Mac you need to change the /settings/reflectorURL.ini file to
http://timemachine.onehouronelife.com/reflector/server.php
The next step is copying over your settings/email.ini and settings/accountKey.ini files over from your main OHOL installation into this client.
You should then be able to login, do a quick update up to v59, then be able to join.
If you are using Steam, you can locate your installation location by:
Right Clicking One Hour One Life in the steam browser -> Properties -> Local Files -> Browse Local Files
Please let me know if you have any issues with these instructions.
I will be play-testing it for the next few hours, come and join!
I will take it on, I sent you an email as well
You mention not wanting to make big overhauls in the other thread, but how many changes would be required to have this be in a "fun" state?
If you are from a swamp biome, you can make bowls and baskets, but any other biome you are stuck being a perpetual scavenger until you find another family. If you are from a mountain biome, enjoy your useless chunks of iron, maybe you can finally get value from them a few generations in when the swamp and plains families are established and trade to make a bellows. Not to mention that the jungle/snow/desert biome are fairly useless in the grand scheme of things, the desert and jungle don't become necessary until your town has an adze already.
Not to mention, you will often get shoehorned into a job in your life. Right now you usually have at least 5 solid choices to maximize the towns' benefit, 20 more minimally helpful or neutral choices. If you get "biome locked", you now have one good choice, and like 5 mediocre choices in your life. The number of items per biome would have to be tripled in my opinion to make this interesting. That is not a quick fix.
Bell Town always revives itself and will never actually die. Too many people know where it's at, and it's resources are crazy. The only thing that dies in Bell Town is the ruling family.
Somewhat offtopic, but how do people know where towns are located? Is it done by reading the game's location data or just recognizing the surroundings? I know there are tons of suburbs around Bell Town, are you talking about the suburbs or people further out (1k+ tiles)?
Yeah, leading the bear away is very simple assuming you have good latency. The bear will move to your tile. Simply wait for the bear to start moving and change the tile you are standing on. If you aren't on the same horizontal, vertical, or diagonal it will take the bear two moves to reach you.
Yes, the only end product is water. I expect a lot more, would be pretty pointless for this to be the end of Newcomen engines.
You are playing the game on very hard mode without the mod. In fact, I am practically unable to do anything but pure town roles if I don't use it. The worst offender for me isn't scavenging for resources, but the random animal deaths. If you have the mod, you will be able to see them take 2-3 steps before you end up within unzoomed distance of them. I can't count the amount of times I have died to boars navigating around dense swamp trees, or having a lag spike and ending up bitten by a snake. I wouldn't mind the difficulty of the resource scavenge too much, it would be worse but not unbearable.
I suggest getting the mod, worst case you can still zoom in all the way when you feel like it. The fertility tracker is a great bonus too, I rarely want to stay in a town with no children to inherit eventually.
I'm wondering if this issue should be tweaked a little bit. Milkweed is very inefficient, and doesn't go very far whenever it is grown it seems like. In a group of intermediate to advanced players there is no issue, but here are some things I have noticed in low tech/less experienced towns:
People plant it too early techwise. In my opinion it is not worth growing unless you have a pump and compost. There are exceptions, but I have seen towns deplete our available water maintaining milkweed when we don't even have steel tools yet.
Any product is quickly squandered. I believe this is due mostly to inexperience, but I see it used on stone hoes, bows that no one is going to use for a while (besides griefing), thread for irrelevant clothing, mistakenly made into a lasso, etc.
It feels a bit too scarce. If everyone were perfectly efficient with it it would be fine, but in any town past gen 3 you generally need to start looking pretty far for it.
Some potential solutions:
Make it more common. Probably doesn't need to be by too much, but I feel the effect ever since the jungle came in and encroached on the other biomes.
Create another source for it, maybe boar/mouflon hair, a new tree, etc. Doesn't have to be easily craftable, just an intermediate way of producing it
Make farming it more efficient. Every soil/dirt investment gives you one milkweed stalk, while gooseberries give you 7 items for no tool usage, carrots give you 5, wheat is very efficient and gives you straw byproduct as well, etc.
Any thoughts? I find it a bit more of an annoyance than I think it should be. Maybe a few months down the line it solves itself as people get better.
As far as I can tell, I was the last person left in the one pond town (Apollo Summer). I foraged like 20 iron and finished the pump right before I died, too bad the town failed due to no water.
That would definitely be cool, it's something we should try to encourage as the playerbase becomes more stable. I think a mom would be ideal for the job, from 15-40 she runs around town and checks everything out. Afterwards, she could be the manager from 40-60.
The problem right now is the ideal candidate for manager are the most qualified players, but they are needed to do a lot of things themselves to keep the town stable. If we get to the point where most players know 1-2 jobs very well, I think it would come more naturally. If we can convince enough players to be managers, it could eventually become "meta", and people will adopt it on their own if it is a good idea in practice.
Standard pen seems to be 4x4 enclosed area of adobe bases or stone blocks. The corners are gooseberry bushes and then they have another "wall" sticking out diagonally so sheep can't walk from the enclosure over the bush to freedom.
Fences and gates are the more "standard" way, but are really expensive at 2 long straight shafts per. Probably not worth it until late game when you have horses and carts to source all the branches.
Yep, or you have to use the tool twice per patch. That's why I dislike milkweed without compost, gotta travel too far for little return.
However, it seems completely feasible to wait out the die off by surviving outside of town.
I have definitely done that before haha, I can usually survive in the wilds just fine with a child or two by staying away from a village. However, the towns I am in are usually hanging by a thread, just enough people are able to water/soil the gooseberries to keep the town alive. So they won't die off now, but they will a few generations down the line once they hit the critical point of too many new players, dirt too far to carry, etc.
I believe that animals always spawn close to their biome (within 5 tiles or something like that). However, after they are spawned, they only walk on the tile type that they spawned on. For example, if you have a desert next to a jungle, and the mosquito spawns in the desert, it will only fly around the desert with no distance limitations as far as I know. Therefore, you can see all sorts of animals in weird places.
I have run into a lot of these villages today, they tend to have the basic steel tools, but don't have any milkweed (have to search around 5+ minutes to find any) or sheep/sheep pens. If it had sheep, I could start making tons of compost (these towns always have giant gooseberry farms), and then scrounge some milkweed seeds to start up a huge milkweed farm. Conversely, with milkweed we could easily make bows and arrows, followed by carts and hunt down some sheep.
When I have neither, and all the other villagers are happy with the status quo, we just get dirt haulers that take 2 minutes per trip, and people maintaining the berries. I have gone out and scrounged some rope, but to do that, followed by a sheep pen, a bow and arrow, and then hunting the sheep down I am already practically dead(not to mention the times I have died to a surprise boar or mosquitoes 40 minutes in).
Has anyone else had any luck in these sorts of towns? I usually am not satisfied maintaining the current, slowly dying town unless someone else is doing the above already. I also have a ton of trouble getting other villagers to help with anything, not to mention there are very few that I would expect to survive in the wilderness for long.
I am a relatively new player who has usually chosen to forge when I have the opportunity to. This is probably not the best audience for this guide as people here will tend to be experienced, but I have seen mostly clueless people around the forge so thought I'd give it a shot anyways.
Caveat: This is written from a smith's perspective, not the most crucial job when the town is starving, but definitely important for long term survival. By all means break these rules where needed if getting steel tools fast is low on the town's current priorities.
General Tips
Forging takes around 30 seconds to a minute to set up if you only have one kiln. Therefore Smiths try to do as much as possible during each forge period. I usually plan to do 4-5 forging actions, so I map it out in my mind beforehand. Any obstructions tends to throw me off track and dramatically lowers my output. This is especially important for when a town first starts smithing, as all tools are wanted in fairly short order.
These following behaviors can mess your smith up pretty badly:
Treating the forge area as the main town square. Anyone moving around obstructs the tools and makes it so the forging does not go as planned. Conversely, building a forge on the only desert land nearby is asking the town to make it the town square, so move it if possible.
Putting items near the forge. Empty space is often needed to move items around, if items are put there it slows me me down dramatically (If you are looking to troll, put small items in those empty spaces, like gooseberry seeds. Best way to confuse me and slow me down)
Taking tools. This is somewhat unavoidable, but the sheer number of tools a smith needs has me running around 25% of the time tracking them all down. This includes hammer, kindling or hatchet/axe, firewood, 2 flat stones, 2 bowls and plates, adobe, bellows, tongs, long straight branch, a nearby fire. Other less important to have tools are round/sharp stones, chisel, file.
Trying to help without asking. I am always happy to have extra help, but a lot of people do not ask beforehand and just obstruct me more than helping. There are a few actions that pretty much always help out but a lot that do not. Clearing the flat stones of items, stacking wood/bars, removing items useless to smithing from the area, bringing wood/iron, setting up crucibles are all usually appreciated. If you are unsure, ask first. There is a lot more you can help out with but you should ask about it before attempting.
Demanding tools. All tools are important, and this is a bigger deal when the forge is just set up than later on. The usual item order I do is
Hammer->Axe->Hoe/Shovel->Other hammer only tools(as needed)->File->Bladed tools. This may differ from village to village, but don't go begging for a knife when your town doesn't have an axe or a hoe yet. Feel free to ask but if the town has barely any steel tools you may not get yours right away.
Apprenticeship
I don't mind teaching new players on how to smith if they ask for it, it may not be the same for all smiths. Here are some tips to ingratiate yourself if you are looking to learn or take over. Here is some advice on getting on a smith's good side:
Do all the good actions in the "Trying to help" section that I mentioned (better to ask first though). If the area is completely set up it takes a lot of stress away from your smith. Afterwards, you can look to expand or help in the smithing process.
Sit by the side and learn. The steel ingot process is always the same so try to learn that first. You can also set that up pretty independently from them (more on that below). Be sure not to be in the way, just stand far enough away where you aren't standing on any tools needed for smithing.
Future helpful actions. Ask the smith if you can set up another kiln if only one exists. That way you can have one kiln setting up while the other one forges. If they do not want one near them, I would still potentially make one 5+ tiles away and help with ferrying charcoal. I doubt any smith would be against free charcoal.
Helping the smith with the process can be useful too. Ask them if you can do the crucible/steel ingot production process for them(after you learn how to do it). If you set up a side area with separate tools you can do this without getting in the smith's way. You don't need any steel tools to do this, so I would personally have no objections with it if done smartly.
Taking over. If the smith is cool with you learning, you'd naturally take over after they retire. Otherwise, if you want to be the next in line I would hunt down iron sources, especially the very rare iron vein. You can then at worst fumble around after the other smith is gone if there is no one else qualified.
TL;DR Keep out of the smith's way, if everyone did that his/her productivity would go up by 100% at least! Ask your smith if they need help if you want to learn/take over the job.
Feedback is welcome. I don't speak for all smiths and more experienced ones probably would do some things differently and/or better than I would.
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