One Hour One Life Forums

I don't have anything to add to this conversation except to say that everyone needs to chill the fuck out and enjoy this amazing thing they bought on the internet. This mind-bogglingly complex game, made by single person, that continues to evolve and presents us with new, interesting, challenging--and yes, sometimes frustrating--reflections on ourselves as humans.

Also, Morti, you are an incredible writer. Thank you for these words. If you write anywhere other than gaming forums (and you should), I'd love to read more.

Also, "retarded" is an ugly word. Stop using it.

Hell yeah! I hadn't thought of this. Dispatching a griefer has so much more significance now that *their* lives aren't cheap, either!

No. As the good Lord intended.

I'm sure the "faster horses" quote will eventually be invoked here, so I wanted to share this really interesting article that talks about the veracity of Henry Ford's most famous quote (spoiler: there's no evidence he ever said it) and argues that:

That said, it's my general sense that Jason's primary concern is adherence to his vision, not in shipping units. If that's the case, then I suggest we all approach the game like the work of art that it is, appreciate it as a thing created by someone with a vision who lets us watch that vision unfold and actually take part in fulfilling that vision, and take him at his word when he says that the most helpful thing we can do is to describe problems, not complain about his refusal to implement solutions that don't jive with his vision.

I don't feel like I'm a customer of his game, but rather that I've paid admission to participate in the creation and enjoyment of something. I wouldn't complain about the game's trajectory or his decisions in the same way that I wouldn't complain about the menu or the chef's decisions if I ever paid for a chef's table experience.

Jason, this is a great game. Thanks for it.

I think no. Ever since seed bowls and carrot stacks were added, carrots have become much less of a hassle and are generally around in abundance. They're not great food, and are better used for other things, but they're good for a yum chain. As with anything, though, don't eat *only* carrots, and never eat the *last* carrot.

Jason fixed potatoes, so while they're still not amazing, they at least don't waste the shovel anymore. I'd say they're fine. They're another good variety food, and one potato is essentially two different foods--one for each half--so it's good to carry in a backpack.

Hot diggity dog this is some fun linguistic thinking. I love the emphasis on gradual change over time and natural phonemic changes based on pretty standard rules. However, I think treating language like genetics isn't super great: if I'm a contemporary with anyone in the same area, and we're not meaningfully separated by geography or culture, we probably speak the same language in the same dialect. However, no one alive today would be able to understand their distant relatives who lived many hundreds of years ago, they're just not around to talk to us.

Just curious: are you a linguist, or just a wonderful, beautiful nerd?

Yes, add this to the time, coordination, and communication constraints. If we could craft "generational knowledge" tools without needing to type out every single word in-game and hope our kids do the same, then more complex societal interactions like trade and coordinated warfare might actually have a shot.

I'm thinking things like a dynamic HUD map that persists through the generations and grows with certain craftable items (watchtowers or survey markers, or something), an offline lineage strategy/family history wiki readable only during the first 3 minutes of a newborn's life, and writeable only by those who've died of old age with no curses in that lineage during the last X minutes... there are lots of things we could do that would make longer-term coordination possible.

But then you get into this being a clan game, not One Hour _ONE LIFE_.

Yes. We just don't have the kind of time or communication capacity required for coordinating trade. Hell, we can barely coordinate basic tasks--things (usually) only get done because individuals see that they haven't been done yet, not because the council of elders passed a resolution that the town should establish a bakery, then appointed a town baker, then raised taxes to pay the baker a salary, etc. Bureaucracy would take years and years of OHOL time. Unless time is somehow stretched or communication and coordination are made much easier, I don't think trade will take off in any kind of meaningful way.

Trade requires a local economy that creates demand for scarce resources from outside the local economy. Currently there is no local economy to speak of (there's barely private ownership!) and there is no regional scarcity--everything is available to everyone just about equally. So I see how the property fences and big biomes ideas are attempting to address this. However, I'd argue that the former doesn't create scarcity--it just pretends at it--and the latter is overkill. To me it seems that this would require almost entirely separate tech trees to make any kind of early civilization viable before a family can even make contact with other civs to attempt trade, much less do so efficiently. One thing we can be done right now is to make some resources for higher- or top-tier tech much more scarce, and only available in tiny "islands" at distances far too spread out for them to be accessed by more than one town. Things like oil and gold, or special new domesticable animals, or certain key ingredients for rubber, copper, glass, certain pigments, etc. Such items have no usefulness in the early game, so it's not harming anyone by making them much less common, but it would create a simulation of scarcity and eventually a regional economy. In this scenario, if your town has abundant palms and rubber trees, you can start cranking out tires and gaskets to trade with the folks from the town over who have access to oil. If there's even higher-tier tech that requires the combination of _all_ of these scarce resources, you get the opportunity for multi-city trade and massive coordination; however, given our time and comms constraints, I really don't see any of this as viable.

Agreed. It's ridiculous that we need to burn a pickaxe to remove one section of stone wall. Make us pay in time, not iron.

It takes two people (usually) to remove a berry bush; why not do the same for a stone wall and preserve the pickaxes? For example, in order to be removed, say a stone wall must be struck two times by pickaxes in quick succession (within 2 seconds). The only problem is that once you strike a wall, you go into a brief slowdown (5 seconds) during which time you cannot drop the pickaxe or strike anything else. This makes it impossible for one person to remove a wall alone, and far easier for the town to catch coordinated griefers.

Great, now I want shepherds, sheep dogs, and flocks of sheep that graze in green biomes. Sheep have never been pen animals, feeding at a trough. They graze freely. And shepherds have been such an important part of human civilization. They follow the herd and live off the land, driving the entire flock back to town a couple of times a year for culling, shearing, and selling.

Imagine a huge flock of sheep out in a green biome, tended by one or a couple guys with shepherd's crooks. Wolves are attracted to the herd and take one from time to time, and threaten the shepherd, as well, unless the shepherd is accompanied by a dog. Flocks work differently than penned sheep, in that they they reproduce freely (albeit far, far more slowly) and their lambs have a 50% chance of becoming fully grown, without being fed, if on green biome. They also produce no dung. I have no idea how to make this work, other than imbuing a craftable shepherd's crook with some kind of magic ability to attract sheep, or requiring sheep to be "herded" by actively clicking on them, lest they wander away, but it would be so frigging cool. Giant flocks of stored wool and mutton that have to be managed far more proactively than penned sheep do currently. If the shepherd dies without a replacement, the sheep scatter and are eventually lost. If towns start developing closer together, we'd get more opportunities for trade, or even sheep rustling. Griefing would be a constant threat.

Maybe sheep never produce dung regardless of how they're managed, and pigs are buffed to fill that need in the compost cycle. Make pork useful (edible carnitas, less expensive tortillas, more uses in other recipes). Give wool and the loom more uses--wool rugs, wool baby slings, wool backpacks--to incentivize active shepherding. A mutton and potato buff--shepherd's pie.

Call it the Big Flocking Update. I mean it basically sells itself.

Edit: the new Yoohoo whistle could call a dog or attract sheep!