a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Also, I'm still not convinced that placing it in the public domain results in my own rights to use the work being swept away from me.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t public domain mean owned by the public and not an individual? You are donating it to the public for all to use in a level playing field. You are using your work from the public domain just like anyone else can.
In the little bit I’ve read, a work cannot be copyrighted from the public domain unless it has been significantly altered, and even then they are only protecting their modifications. The original work still remains without copyright.
If China follows this then it would not be possible to copyright the original public domain content. That is a big “if” and I have no idea.
Whatever the case, I am ok with the term public domain as long as you follow it up with how we can and cannot use your work. This is more of a communication point. I want to understand your interpretation of it.
Does it feel weird to put these clauses next to the term public domain? That is up to you. I just want clarity.
I also don't really see why you dont just use a non comercial license. Artists/Fans would be able to do stuff without aprovall and the others would have to email you.
At first I liked this idea, but I don't think it is in line with what Jason wants. You can do just as much damage to his name and reputation with a non commercial product as you can with a commercial product. Maybe even more so since free content can reach a larger audience.
Another example: say I put ads on onetech to cover hosting costs (which I don't plan to do), would it suddenly become a commercial product since I'm getting money from it? Probably so. Does it effect Jason differently? Probably not.
And unfortunately, it's really a "know it when you see it" kind of thing.
With those examples in mind, what kind of wording would you recommend? Again, I have no interest in stopping anyone from "doing" anything. Making the collage. Using the piano music in a movie score. Making a stand-alone browser of artwork. Or making a Gates-sized fortune from these activities, without giving me a dime.
Those examples are pretty extreme, but there are so many gray areas that we are required to guess at what will be acceptable. There is no boundary specified so we originally assumed there wasn't one. But in light of recent events we see there is an invisible boundary that you have which is "know it when you see it". We can try to guess at where this line is but it will never match your line.
Also in those examples the content creators (both you and whoever builds on your work) has little control over what happens to it. If they post their artwork on Twitter and it goes viral, how is it suddenly a problem for them? Even if they could control it, perhaps it is part of their contribution which caused the popularity.
The key is to understand the risks ahead of time. The current "no_copyright.txt" looks like there is no risk.
While I don't think you need a huge complicated license, perhaps some generic line about "any work that damages, competes with, or causes confusion with the existing One Hour One Life game is not allowed" would help. You could also have a note to email you for clarification, and that any discussion over email supersedes the license.
Jason, as someone who has invested a lot of time building upon your work (through onetech), this mobile event has been quite discouraging. I feel the no_copyright.txt statement of "absolutely no restrictions, and no permission necessary" should be updated to clarify your ideas of what is allowed.
I understand you consider fraud to be outside of the copyright, but I don't think the average non-lawyer sees it this way. I certainly did not.
Imagine the case of a fan creating artwork that uses some of your art and then they sign their name on it. They invested hours into making it, but you can demand they put a big statement over the top of the image to let everyone know you created some of the assets because otherwise it is fraud. I doubt you would do this, but I feel it is not far from your interpretation of fraud.
You have a right to specify how your work is used, but please be straight with us and up front about it. Otherwise we risk investing time building upon your work and having the rug pulled out from underneath us.
he's been saying there was a surprise the whole time, and it wasn't the accidental infinite carrots.
My understanding is that onetech automatically updates from gamecode, so it's not clear to me how he could add something that wouldn't show up as a new object.
There are two different code repositories for OHOL, onetech only updates with the data (content) repo. Changes in the game engine/server repo are not shown on onetech.
Pretty sure the surprise has to do with VOG mode since the latest update includes VOG fixes. I wonder if Jason will demonstrate OHOL through VOG mode in his GDC presentation. That would be fun.
I agree with Peremptive in that the area ban likely plays a part here. Isn’t it a couple thousand tiles? Yet Eves don’t spawn nearly that far away from each other, so if you are within this distance from a town or successful Eve then it really limits who can spawn as your child.
Maybe the ban area size should be reduced to the size of Eve spawn distance.
I was also slightly concerned about the wording of the take down notices. But I can see why Jason has done it, "looking for the right levers" as he said. And shouldn't the take down notice only provide the basis for *your* argument, the developers will surely get to have their say in the process too, I actually don't know how that goes. So in that regards maybe its fine and all points of view will be heard. All the same because it will come to that anyway maybe it would've been better to highlight that you aren't concerned about copyright.
I've heard apps getting incorrectly taken down from the App store on less grounds than this. With millions of apps, and likely thousands that are incorrectly using an IP, they probably error on the side of taking it down, although it may depend on the popularity of the app.
I'd be surprised if Apple reaches out to the developers first before taking it down, but hopefully they will communicate with both parties.
The takedown requests don't mention the artwork is under public domain and the name One Hour One Life is not trademarked. I feel they don't accurately describe the situation.
I'm not a lawyer, but can't they sue for damages if your takedown request is successful and then later proves false in court? I'd suggest treading carefully.
Jason, do you mind sharing the takedown request messages here? For the sake of having a record of those interactions.
They published a version where they took sole credit with no explanation for 40 days in China, where it was seen and interacted with by more people than ever saw or interacted with the game in its entire history.
The very explicit and hard-to-miss wording is an attempt to correct for that. Hopefully, whatever Chinese people are still playing the game will be unable to miss it.
The very explicit wording may only need be a temporary thing. I'm not sure. Right now, there is so much confusion that more extreme measures need to be taken.
I see, if the reason for additional wording is to compensate for damages caused by the lack of credit to the China audience then I understand it better. I'm still not in full agreement though.
For example, I forgot to mention that I've also receive emails from mobile players asking for refunds. The game didn't work on their phone, can they have their money back. Umm...
Also, you can imagine a nightmare scenario where the mobile servers go down for a week, and everyone gets mad at me, and thinks that I'm a bad developer.
If everyone knows it's "unofficial," these confusions won't be possible.
I feel like these issues would come up in the theoretical scenario of copycat OHOL with no credit. It is a downside of having a commercial game under the public domain.
The point is, there are other things that forbid me from making that statement, other than copyright and the licenses that copyright empower you to grant. You don't have to spell such things out in a license (and almost no licenses do spell it out).
Right, but if your issue is solely with them falsely claiming ownership, then a statement should only be required where they are claiming ownership: splash screen next to their logo. Other parts of the app (name, lobby, etc.) should not require a change if they do not have their own credit there.
This is actually really cool. It is possible for Jason to make some uncraftable items that one can only get through Vogi. Imagine a special crown or idol they can bring back to town and tell stories about. This item can be passed down through generations as a symbol of their ancestors meeting Vogi.
Not to mention it is probably a ton of fun to mess with players, especially if they aren't familiar with VOG mode.
Jason, I appreciate you putting OHOL in the public domain, but I feel like there are invisible strings attached to it that are not made clear up front. Imagine this scenario:
Someone copies the source code of the game, builds it, and then sells their own server logins for $10 with no credit to you or themselves. This means they would not be committing fraud since they are not taking credit. However it would do great damage to the original OHOL because it would undercut the game.
I don't see anything in the public domain license that prevents this. Would you have an issue with it? In that case public domain might not be the correct license for OHOL.
Now imagine they modified the game slightly, introduced some bugs and extra artwork that wasn't yours, but still no credit mentioned. It would make OHOL look bad and you would get bug reports, however this still falls within the public domain license. Would you have a problem with it? In that case public domain might not be correct.
If you are ok with the above scenarios, then the real issue is where credit is given. In that case a notice should only be required wherever they take credit for the game (wherever their name and logo appear). This means areas of the game which do not mention their name should not require any notice.
The strategy would have to be to make as much stew as possible, especially since you're limited to a 5x5. I'm tempted to try it.
This brings up the question of how much food can you get on one tile? Stew is really good at 224 pips for one tile. A box of baskets of Berry Carrot Rabbit Pie beats it slightly at 240 pips.
Correction: Oops I didn't consider the 4 uses of Berry Carrot Rabbit Pie so it's actually 960 pips for a box of baskets of pie.
One cooked turkey has the potential to supply 248 pips but that requires additional processing to turn it into soup after eating.
Perhaps a rule would need to be clarified, what state does the food need to be in? If it needs to be an object you can pick up and eat directly then a pot of stew would not be allowed. I suggest "all required objects to eat should be provided in the 5x5". This means an empty clay bowl should be in the 5x5 to count a pot of stew.
Along these lines, I've considered making a simplified turn based variation of OHOL which uses the same objects and transitions but has a limited playing area. This turns it into a sort of puzzle and offers a playground to experiment with new objects without the time pressure.
If there's interest I may take a crack at it.
Requiring they add the word “unofficial” to the app name after the fact doesn’t feel right to me. These original agreements play a part in how much time to invest in development. If they knew ahead of time about these requirements they may have decided not to invest in making it.
The mobile devs want the game experience to be as good as they can make it, and adding a constant splash screen every time the user switches to the app is a poor experience if it can be avoided.
I like the idea of “wherever you are credited, I want this statement” which sounds like a good measure to avoid fraud. This would apply to the app description, the original splash screen, interviews and articles, etc.
It is unfortunate that you have to deal mobile support requests, but I imagine the popularity of the mobile version has increased interest and sales in your official PC version too.
I believe snowballs will still be deadly in the sense that the victim is disarmed and cold so they might starve to death. What is fixed is the instant death from being hit by 4 snowballs which resulted in the “killed by snowball” death message.
While not exactly the same as labor costs, I plan to improve the difficulty calculation on onetech.
Spawn chance of natural objects is the key factor. Any object can be broken down to its natural ingredients which determines how difficult it is to find them and therefore craft them together.
The number of crafting steps should be factored in. Doing 100 transitions is more difficult than 10 transitions.
Transition time is also important. The bell tower is fairly easy if you don’t consider the 3 hour transitions. Transition times which can be done in parallel should not add together.
Reusable objects should be considered. If you use the smithing hammer 10 times to get a shovel, it shouldn’t count as crafting 10 smithing hammers. Only one hammer is required, but we need to consider the durability used on that object.
I have yet to find an elegant solution for computing this for onetech. We need to track all consumed objects and leftover objects to see what is overlapping when combining objects together. For example, if two objects require a fire somewhere in their tree then we only need to craft one fire. However what if one object consumed the fire so it is not reusable, could you craft the other object before the fire was consumed?
Here are some other questions I have:
Should the number of biomes needed to visit increase the difficulty?
Should transitions with objects that decay quickly be more difficult? For example, working with Newcomen engines and forges should raise the difficulty since it requires precise timing.
Should we look for shortcuts in difficulty? For example, one use of a ball of thread from sheep might be less difficult than milkweed if we are crafting something which requires a ton of thread.
In a similar vein, should we be able to check an object’s difficulty given certain conditions? For example, what if you have a sheep farm setup? All the basic tools made? Exausted the nearby iron? Low on milkweed? These all play a part in object difficulty.
In that case, it is possible to reach circular dependencies which is a whole ball of wax that I don’t want to tackle.
"The mobile version of One Hour One Life includes changes from the original PC version which were not approved by the original developer, Jason Rohrer."
This one is my favorite.
Looks like Jason is going through a bunch of GitHub issues with this update. I added an issue for stackable carrots:
https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLifeData7/issues/179
And another one for more seed bowls:
https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLifeData7/issues/180
I don’t like to use the issue tracker for non-bugs, but these are inconsistencies with other items and seem to be universally wanted.
This bug is due to the newly added Wild Horse with Lasso.
https://onetech.info/2710-Wild-Horse-with-Lasso
This object spawns in the wild like a horse, so you just see a lasso once the horse runs away.
I submitted an issue for this: https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLifeData7/issues/171
+1 to raising the bottom a bit. I think it will help ease the difficulty raised by the latest temperature update.
I just want to say, your email response is very impressive. I don't know how you find time to read all emails and respond in such detail while developing the game on your own.
What about having a beta server where updates are released on Thursday/Friday then published to the public on Monday. This way we can test everything and report bugs without breaking the main game.
This is an interesting discussion. The fact that there are mixed thoughts on yum chaining makes me think that it is pretty well balanced.
I imagine the benefit of yum chaining starts high, dips in the middle, and ends high. Imagine you are on a 20+ yum chain. Even the forsaken baked potato looks good with counting as two food items in one. That’s 50+ food from one potato.
Whatever the math says, yum chaining is also a fun way to play. It rewards making a variety of foods while offering the challenge of seeing how high you can get it.