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a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building

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#251 Re: Main Forum » Not very accessible for new players » 2019-11-22 15:52:16

The game may be relying too much on meta knowledge. But that's a super hard problem, I think. If solved, the solution could be easily applied to real world organizations.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Anyone with half a brain would jump at the chance for free labor from you.  I know I would.

Jason, delegating work is a skill.

A skill you can learn a bit while playing OHOL, which is super cool, but a skill nonetheless. And not a common one, I think, especially since most players are not very old IRL.

You most likely know all this, of course, but I think you may be underestimating how hard it is, because it's easy for you.

#252 Re: Main Forum » Any objections to auto-orienting walls? » 2019-11-22 14:08:09

To make the difference between auto-orienting and fixed stakes less confusing, there could be two separate modes. "Common stakes" and "Artistic stakes"?

Stakes look like a general-purpose tool, similar to building blueprints or plans in strategy games. Stakes signify the intent to build something, before the build process has actually started.

They could be extended to work like blueprints in Settlers:
1. Place stakes on the floor
2. Place building materials inside the stakes
3. Apply a hammer to finish building

#253 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: way stones » 2019-11-22 13:54:22

Having rules that are different between low pop and the big server may be dangerous in the long run. There must be a way to recover from outages, so that a day of zero player activity does not kill off the game completely. If something doesn't work well for low pop servers without changes, I think that's a design smell.

#254 Re: Main Forum » Jason the new update, maybe some minor fixes to stop the griping? » 2019-11-21 10:28:34

Drums could be more like mobile, broadcasting Morse-only walkie-talkies. You pick a drum up, then you say :drum .. .----. -- / .- / -.. .-. ..- -- -- . .-. / .- -. -.. / .. .----. -- / --- -.- .- -.--, then everyone hears the message but with a drum emoji in front of it

#255 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: way stones » 2019-11-21 10:13:27

A big stone is also easier to notice than a piece of paper.

A zoom mod seems really necessary for efficient exploration though...

#256 Re: Main Forum » Are we all cheating at the top or? » 2019-11-21 09:59:32

jasonrohrer wrote:

Ma and g-ma and such are only supposed to count for you if you are 3+ years old...

Though I now am realizing where this bug is lurking...  will fix it.

Hmm, wouldn't people just wait until 3+ to die? It's rare to have a sibling this fast.

That's about 300 times slower than just spamming /die, of course, but still easier than actually playing if you want more tool slots

#257 Re: Main Forum » Come on Jason, this doesn't fkin work » 2019-11-19 22:47:35

As someone who only reads forums and plays by proxy through Youtube, this update is unexpectedly exciting.

A village died out? Meh, who cares.
The whole game is under the risk of becoming unplayable, and everyone scrambles to find a way to fix it without breaking the constraints? Freaking awesome.

Jason is my favorite game developer.

#258 Re: Main Forum » Rethinking travel through bad biomes » 2019-11-19 22:40:41

jasonrohrer wrote:

It's really important that you can't pick stuff up in a bad biome, so that if you stumble into an abandoned rubber farm (or whatever), you can't just help yourself to the stuff that's sitting there.  You need to find a rubber family to help you.  That's the whole point.

Is this really that important?

1. The stuff can easily be in the neutral biome since settling there is a better idea.
2. Just having the stuff shouldn't be as good as having a cooperating family anyway.
3. Finding abandoned loot is a nice consolation prize for people who spend their lives looking for other families.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I know that people have suggested action blocking in bad biomes as an alternative.  But I feel like this is a huge messaging problem.  I walk into a bad biome, and for some reason, I can pick up this rock but not that rock.

You could change the mechanics so that all the important resources should be extracted from unmovable items. Like hitting a big chunk of iron with a rock to get small chunks of iron.

This way you can let anyone carry anything anywhere, and just make them sneeze and drop stuff when they try to interact with something while in a bad biome.

#259 Re: Main Forum » Finding other families: Waystones (with Jason's format) » 2019-11-19 22:24:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

No, I mean the person who makes the waystone gets the map back right away (to make another or whatever).

Oh, makes sense!

Waypoints will probably make roads less important: roads are sometimes used just for navigation. If you don't care about movement speed, you could set up a network of numbered waypoints that are relatively easy to find, and it'd probably be cheaper than building roads everywhere.

#260 Re: Main Forum » Finding other families: Waystones (with Jason's format) » 2019-11-19 13:23:53

I don't know if removable maps are better as a game mechanic, but as an engineer I'd definitely prefer permanent waystones that can't be griefed without considerable effort.

#261 Re: News » Update: Family Specialty » 2019-11-19 12:02:24

Miskas, honestly this is a great story. And in the context of the update it's an even greater story of the Man vs Author kind :)

It's also a story only a veteran player would be able to tell. But that's fine as long as there are veteran players to tell the story, and as long as the other players will be able to hear it.

I'm 60% sure at this point that Jason is a trickster god who knows exactly what he's doing, and that forums are a part of the game.

#265 Re: Main Forum » Plan for this week's update (2-phase update) » 2019-11-16 22:31:58

Legs wrote:

As a result outsiders are often welcomed with confused smiles instead of being treated with suspicion or hostility like before.

Wholesome! :D

Legs wrote:

Maps are absolutely essential, I'm seeing them mass produced and stockpiled in multiples.

Woah, we finally have libraries for realplay reasons!
Now we need a reason to travel back East and use old libraries, and OHOL will officially become a Doomed City, The Game

#266 Re: Main Forum » Suggestion - Wild Roads » 2019-11-16 20:56:45

Roads are interesting because they change the topology. Without roads all activity is shaped as roughly circular blobs around points of interest and straight lines between them.

Not artificial roads though: those tend to copy the already existing paths. But natural roads would encourage building stuff around them. You could say that the space around a road is compressed: everything is closer if measured by the time spent travelling.

Rivers are slightly more interesting in that they have directions.

#267 Re: Main Forum » Plan for this week's update (2-phase update) » 2019-11-16 16:10:32

Maybe it should be easier to find other families, so that you're guaranteed to find at least one family of each type in time. Otherwise it can feel like you're screwed either by the game or by your grandparents, and there's nothing you can do about it.

#268 Re: Main Forum » Plan for this week's update (2-phase update) » 2019-11-16 09:41:17

Yeah, this isn't EVE where bugs could ruin thousands of player hours of effort. As long as the game remains playable, the bugs don't matter all that much, and can even be interesting.

#269 Re: Main Forum » Pristine abandoned cities.... » 2019-11-16 09:32:23

1-sapling alphabet (base-5) contains 2.32 bits per letter and costs 1 sapling per letter. 2.32 bits/sapling
2-sapling alphabet (base-16) contains 4 bits per letter and costs 1.69 saplings per letter. 2.37 bits/sapling

Interestingly, using only one 2-sapling letter is even less efficient.

But I'm not sure how important these differences are. I think it's best to use the most convenient system: one that makes it easier to not make mistakes.

You probably don't want to do sapling calculations in your head anyway, so you'll need a calculator for that. (That's like 5 lines of JS in your browser console, plus a dictionary. I can throw together a calculator webpage if you really want one.)

The convenience of incrementing/decrementing sapling numbers is more important, so you want the order of sapling digits to be very clear.

#270 Re: Main Forum » Pristine abandoned cities.... » 2019-11-15 21:29:06

Just use words as base-26 numbers.

Or choose a more resource-efficient subset. As long as you're the only one using the numbers, it's fine. The only thing that matters is the set of possible digits and their order.

#271 Re: Main Forum » Are abbandon wealthy big cities a common thing? why do we lose cities? » 2019-11-15 21:22:57

Hahaha. Jason doesn't want to make the game Candy Crush-fun by just adding more content. But players do want that kind of fun, and players are capable of choosing the parts of the game that provide more fun of this kind.

In effect this makes the constraints of the game meaningless: the game is being used as an engine for another, self-imposed game.
Which is fine in a single-player game, but in a multiplayer that's like playing Left 4 Dead with someone who's doing a pacifist run.

I like to think that the only solution here is to use Candy Crush-fun as a reward for playing by the rules.

#272 Re: Main Forum » Coming Soon: Family Specialization » 2019-11-14 20:43:23

Can you build roads in a specialist biome as a non-specialist?

#273 Re: Main Forum » Soul score » 2019-11-11 23:25:30

Also this thread is just me being an architecture astronaut, I don't expect any of this to become a part of the game.

(Though it's totally possible for the soul score to be implemented outside the game, since it's just a number. I've already started doing it, but I'm easily distracted by new shiny project ideas.)

#274 Re: Main Forum » Soul score » 2019-11-11 23:21:20

Note that by itself soul score is just a number. (Just like gene score.) It could be used in a leaderboard, but that's about it.

If players were incentivized to increase their soul score, I think the optimal play would be that of trying to have as many descendants as possible. (Not just direct children.)

But it wouldn't incentivize players to care for their sisters and other relatives, not by itself. This could be fixed by making players more likely to be born as their own descendants. This would also align souls with genes: creating multiple copies of oneself is philosophically similar to having a chance of being teleported into one of the newly created copies of self.

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