a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I mentioned three fairly simple changes that would exponentially improve the game here:
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … p?id=10651
It's getting to a point where we may as well just fix the game ourselves.
I mostly just need someone who is familiar with the source, and knows where everything is, to walk me through the various files I need to edit.
I can do the coding myself, I just don't want to have to parse dozens of files to just make a few small changes.
This would all theoretically be done mid-late December after my term is over.
3. Score/Game Purpose
The Original Idea:
It's a survival game
You are born, contribute, have to say goodbye, and then you die
The game is an experience
The problem:
We've run out of content
The game just repeats itself down a westward tube of bands without purpose
Looting becomes an issue because it takes away from the survival experience
The Solution: Waves of infinitely scaling enemies, Scoreboard, Rewards (elevated privileges, custom skins)
Full disclosure: what I'm basically suggesting is what they did in Don't Starve. In that game, dogs get stronger and more numerous over time.
Scoring has many options, but basic things like total enemies killed and highest level of enemies killed are easily tracked, various achievements/challenges could be added
Families can be scored as well as individuals
For privileges, being able to choose which family you are born into (based on score) having access to better skins or being able to customize your own (at least in color)
Rewards would include score obviously but higher level enemies could also drop rare craftable components (for weapons/armor/walls) a bear-skull helmet, for example
The waves of enemies could be implemented in a variety of ways the point being that instead of running out of water or getting bored, you eventually are overrun
Why this works:
Stories becomes more rich and complex, heroes are born
The game has a purpose with a meaningful scoreboard
Looting becomes risky and rewarding -- a new gameplay aspect rather than a problem
Variety of possibilities for new content to be added
Why this is easy:
Scoreboard already exists and making those changes should be trivial
Enemies and seeking behavior already exists just increase/gauge spawn frequency
Nothing suggested here really requires more coding only scalable changes (like new skins, new achievements/challenges)
These implementations should take no more than a few hours
I spoke of this stuff here and there and now I'm going to consolidate with a little more detail from the technical side
2. Combat
The Original Idea:
Adds a layer of danger when it comes to bears, boar, and wolves (also snakes and bugs to some extent)
You can kill people who are problematic
The system is intentionally hobbled so that griefers can't use it to be more problematic
The problem:
Bears, wolves etc basically just become an annoyance (hetwu literally marks tiles to prove this point)
The rewards they drop are hardly worth the bother
Boar and bears, as they exist, are both grief-able (in fact, the most damaging griefing technique)
Griefers can just run away, and then come back (which is particularly bad with horses or cars)
The system is clunky and just generally bad (probably because it's intentional)
The solution: Weapons, Armor, Health Pips (players and walls) Scalable Enemies -- and remove the existing system
- As soon as a player pulls a weapon, the screaming and alert is triggered
- Keep the system as it is for bears/wolves (with arrows) and snakes with knives (for close combat)
- Implement basic health pips (maybe five to start off)
- Pads/stiches return base pips after they are damaged
- Armor adds grey pips but as they are damaged they are removed until the armor breaks
- Better weapons do more pip damage (eventually)
- Walls and bears/wolves have same pip health system
- Walls could theoretically be improved with craftables
- Wolves and bears naturally get stronger (more health/damage) over time
- They seek players and will attack walls to access
Why this works:
There will be more things to craft
There are more reasons to build walls and structures (and probably more crafting options here too)
There will be a greater sense of danger and necessity
Why this is easy:
Most of this is scalable -- it will work as it is with basic clothes/knives/bows/walls but leaves opportunity for new craftables
The basic code for health already exists (in bears if not players)
The pip code already exists
Removing the current system may even be a switch
The alert code already exists
Item degradation code already exists (at least for clothes)
Seeking pathfinding code already exists (this may present the greatest challenge though)
Conclusion:
This is considerably more difficult than the previous idea but it's mostly patchwork.
The code already exists in some implementation and just needs to be copied/moved with minor edits and then be tested/debugged.
The only real work here is the pathfinding with respect to destroyable walls.
The algorithm/code needed is surely already written up somewhere because I've seen it in numerous games.
This whole system, without any new items, could be done in a couple days.
I spoke of this stuff here and there and now I'm going to consolidate with a little more detail from the technical side
1. Trade/Biome restriction
The Original Idea:
Force different groups of players to interact with each other
Promotes interaction
Realism in that some resources are only available in some places
Spacing out groups probably saves system resources when population is high
The problem:
Trading stuff, especially with a language barrier, is frustrating and boring
People may ignore you
The bug in Eve placement often makes the distances anywhere from 2k-10k
Families can't get necessary goods for water (rubber, oil)
Villages perish as soon as the deep well expires
Solution:
Eliminate Biome restrictions
Increase band distances to 1k or more
Why this works:
Families still benefit from trade because they won't have to walk as far
All of the problems are solved because any family /can/ get stuff if they need, they just have to walk
Realism is preserved and improved (obvious)
Why this is easy:
Jason mentioned there are switches to add and remove content
Extending biome bands and disabling the biome restrictions should not be more than two edits and should realistically only take a couple hours
Conclusion:
In so little time, the game is fixed and improved in so many ways
make them look stupid/attack their life failures (which you can assume)
actually my bad I think I planted maybe 30-40 on a sprinkler system with a bowl or two -- I concede
there's loads of water and consequently even more milkweed (I don't think I've ever planted it)
and I just shoot pitbulls no worries
I just think rubber needs to be accessible to all families
I think the easiest way is to make rubber/palm trees plant-able anywhere
Sulfur could just be modified so that they occur very rarely outside of the desert
All the other non essential stuff is not that big of a deal except maybe oil.
It's difficult enough just given the extra distance for other families -- so ginger doesn't totally lose their advantage.
But all families should at least be able to interact with the tarries, placing them on the edge of the snow biome on an unlock tile would fix this.
Alternatively, by increasing the length of bands, the family advantage is still preserved by distance.
Could be as much as 1000 tiles from one biome line to the next.
With this greater distance you could remove restrictions but eves could still migrate anywhere and all families could get all resources.
The different races still makes sense (cause their features are based on origin) and there is still a major benefit to trade because
having to walk 3000 tiles from snow to desert (and then back) would be a task indeed.
Just my two cents...
Race restrictions need to be changed at least for rubber (maybe allow planting of latex trees outside jungle, make sulfur ponds occur everywhere)
Add craftable armor, more weapons and very basic HP (maybe only 3 hits to death, armor absorbs a hit and breaks)
Weapons and armor could be scalable such that greater attack requires greater armor with no upper limit (more resources/time invested, better armor/weapon)
Add waves of enemies (even just bears) that gradually increase spawn rate based on time, tech level, player pop, and position -- gradually moving east to west across the map
This will force towns/players to migrate and create a cost for scavenging. Enemy damage and hp can similarly be scalable, increasing over time with no upper limit.
Walls should similarly have hp of some kind and players and enemies should be able to damage them (also scalable)
This will greatly expand the gameplay of structure design by adding the necessity of defense
Update the scoreboard to accommodate these changes -- track total enemies killed per life or series of lives, mark towns and families as score entities and record how long they lasted etc
Implement achievements and/or rewards (custom skins or titles would be cool)
All of these changes are not that hard to make and would exponentially increase gameplay possibilities and total gameplay hours as well as fixing some emergent problems in the current implementation.
The combat engine doesn't even need to be changed, just the rules that govern it's existing function.
Some sounds aren't working anymore.
Anyone know why/how to fix?
I never said I would teach them all. I just know that I can do the entire process by myself and produce enough food for them to not die. I typically tell noobs to start with gathering stuff or rabbit hunting but really I think the best way to learn is to leave the town and survive on your own for a dozen lives or so.
The point of my post is that there is nothing wrong with the game and that it is a success that one person was able achieve as much as he did.
Players consume game content much faster than developers can churn it out and then turn around and complain when it runs out.
hetuw also just broke again damn how do we fix that again?
How do you know these things? lol
#1 Dynamic Environment with History
The map is an environment that is constantly changing. As players continuously migrate west, in search of iron, water and oil, we write a timeline across the world.
Beyond the basic setup of raw resources, everything on the map is placed deliberately and has a story.
I often wander around and find little farms with basic tools and some bones and wonder what happened. Did a child wander too far, get lost and try to survive?
What did they build and why? How old were they? Based on what is left behind, did they make a mistake? What was it? Were they wearing fancy clothes or fur skins?
All of these little details tell me a little more about what happened.
Then what is left behind becomes a part of my story. I can't express my glee when I'm mostly naked and run across a backpack, decent clothes, or a very difficult to craft tool.
On several occasions, I have travelled east along the highways and witnessed town after town of rich and complex history, much of which I majorly contributed to, including the road itself.
It may seem straight forward because the dynamic environment is emergent but most games do not have this. It is incredibly difficult to program and most of the online
implementations I've seen are not great. Moreover, AAA games cannot and most likely will not ever be able capture this gameplay because it would be too demanding on system resources.
#2 Open Design with Culture
OHOL is setup such that you can do things in nearly any fashion you want. I prefer games like this because it presents the opportunity for our mushy human brains to slowly scrape the
edges of the possibility space. We can explore different building shapes, survival strategies, smithing designs and general patterns of behavior. What is really interesting is that certain
strategies have been accepted as the community standard and repeat despite no external demand they must. Some examples include the 3x3 farm meta, potato ovens, taco buildings
and more. One I personally started was marking highways with road signs and then eventually waystones to coordinate exact position.
Once more, this complex interaction of players and the environment would be nearly impossible to program and I can't think of many games that capture this dynamic as well as OHOL does.
#3 Skill Based/ Reward
OHOL has a pretty vast system of crafting that took me probably hundreds of hours to understand completely. I started being mostly useless, to then mostly gathering things.
I then learned cooking, smithing, farming and eventually everything else. There were many lives along the way where towns would fail because there was no cook/smith/farmer.
There was a distinct reward in knowing that I did posses the necessary skills and gradually became a more and more vital member of each family I was born into.
Also the process of learning itself and having people teach me the very fine details and eventually becoming exceptionally fast and effective. At this point I know the exact process
to transform a handful of naked people standing confused around a fire into a thriving metropolis with wine, airplanes, and sports cars.
Conclusion: Why I Don't Play (much) Anymore
I debated whether or not I would include this but I came up with a simple answer: I beat the game. It's no fault of the developer, or the community or anyone else.
I have mastered every job, explored a vast variety of building layouts, paved tens of thousands of tiles, built colossal structures and labyrinths, ventured far out and lived by myself in fully
advanced, locked paver outposts thousands of tiles away from nearest settlement. I've memorized nearly all of the crafting formulas and developed some of the most mathematically
efficient systems for doing just about everything.
If anything, the fact I fully explored the game is makes it a massive success. I'm sure I put more hours into OHOL than I did into Skyrim and I believe that OHOL's gameplay is far superior.
This game will always be in my top 10, probably closer to top 5. This is not simply because of what it is but because I understand how it works and how AAA companies with massive teams
and huge budgets still fall short in terms of gameplay by comparison to something as simple and elegant as OHOL.
forman wrote:jasonrohrer wrote:I had someone ask me for "garlic bread" in the Discord yesterday. Would garlic bread make the game better?
Was this also possibly related to the 'garlic griefing' thing?
There was a period where someone was mass producing garlic in order to waste water.
Someone had mentioned that it was problematic because garlic didn't have enough uses.
Mikulas mentioned it. I didn't see a reason why from him yesterday, but I could have missed it.
That said, I finally remembered that there was a bug report on garlic here: https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLifeData7/issues/912
As wondible put it:
wondible wrote:It is a trap for new players who try to plant it in the same volume as everything else, and a tool for griefers to fill up space and waste resources.
A pretty simple fix would be making garlic edible.
Not particularly tasty but can't imagine it would be much worse than eating a raw onion.
Or raw corn or hot pepper, for that matter.
I had someone ask me for "garlic bread" in the Discord yesterday. Would garlic bread make the game better?
Was this also possibly related to the 'garlic griefing' thing?
There was a period where someone was mass producing garlic in order to waste water.
Someone had mentioned that it was problematic because garlic didn't have enough uses.
"In walking around the world as VOG, I can't remember the last time I saw a sports car."
A couple months or so ago, when I played more, there were quite a few cars around.
The fact that they permanently destroy bugs made having at least one worth while.
In a 'chop forward shovel backward' strategy, cars were also good for clearing paths for paving.
If they could carry more stuff, they would be more useful.
Mostly, I never made cars because typically I had to choose between a sports car or a truck and the truck was a higher priority.
Beyond that, I focused more on massive sprinkler systems and plows.
It's a shame those aren't used more.
Planes would also be cool if they could have truck carrying capacity and a few tweaks to make them more efficient.
I've been enjoying low pop/fewer families gameplay if I'm being honest
Have you thought much about how that might work for complex items?
You could give percentage of points per use of item and distribute based on how many steps each person contributed but this is far more complicated than necessary.
To begin, start whomever completes the object gets the points. If people exploit this, don't help them with stuff.
Also implementing something like this would take insane amount of time
Not really. The most time intensive part of coding is implementing complex design and bug hunting. This would take a lot of edits, I think, but its fairly simple.
In most oop designs, all actions inherit or interface somehow with a generic 'action', here you just put a few lines to add a point to the actor's society score.
That score attribute needs to be added to agent and every craft-able object needs to have a value added to it.
On completion, you call the item value to add to the agent's score.
As for 'bad behaviors' think of it like a banking system. If you have been contributing steadily you should have a huge score and the relative cost of killing one
problematic player is a non issue. Exploits like over producing certain items is dealt with by the fact that you only get points when the object is used/consumed.
There are other ways to combat exploits like exponentially reducing the points for repetitive behavior etc.
So, the whole game has the idea of playing for the sake of other players (not yourself)
Uh, yeah this is a community based game. Jason already implemented a score and curse system so this is really just an improvement there.
Note, you can completely ignore the score in my system only you won't get to be a power user and make sweeping changes that can effect other people.
Similarly, if you are constantly engaging in costly behavior and have a negative score, you will be exiled to donkey town.
Note even in jason's design this doesn't stop you from playing, only from playing with others, hence, 'community game'
found a copy on my old laptop, thanks
I might have brought this before but since Jason may be back soon, I figure it's worth another mention.
The idea is that score should be based on utilitarian factors rather than how long your characters live
Food production -- relative to meal complexity
Iron refining, tool production etc all relative to complexity of the formula being used
This would require a lot of function editing or some kind of interface pattern but it wouldn't be that complicated
Basically just a tick to a score attribute that pulls a data value from the object in question when the action is performed
A better version however, would be that the score only increases when someone /else/ uses something a player produced
This would require more tracking but would remove a few possible exploits from the previous system
Not only would this adjustment improve the existing score system but could be a more reliable factor for further game updates
For example, if the score can predict player reliability this allows the potential to give greater powers to leaders or players with high scores
This already governs things like exile or property inheritance but could potentially allow high level players to set the family spawn zone
choose where they are born, or allow an override for opening iron mines (rather than the current well system)
Similarly, bad, or risky behavior (like killing) could damage score value similar to the way downvoting works in stackoverflow
This would also effectively fix the curse system
Needed a bigger SSD and then accidentally reformatted my old drive, need to re download the game from PC key
Can't find any links to the game download and I don't have access to the key anymore
Also has hetuw been patched yet or do I have to edit that update line again?
Are you taking into consideration the number of valves? I calculated 1000 bowls of water per each kero use with 40 valves
The more valves you stick into it the more efficient it is per use with no upper limit -- therefore I don't ever see the downside.
Each village usually doesn't collapse all of their mines so I start farming injection nozzles.
My sprinkler was moved from at least 5 different towns.
Could have done more that 40 nozzles but its pretty annoying to move all that around even with a truck.
The truth is the nozzles are the hard part so you could just leave all the pipes behind and rebuild those -- they don't take that long.
The initial investment is a pain yeah
You get seven bags of soil per compost and three bowls per bag
I know I have 40 sprinklers so I push a compost on the left and right of 3 10 tile intervals for each row
6 compost for one row iirc if you think about it its not that bad, only takes a few minutes to set up the soil
Fits near a base easier
20 tiles is just the minimum for which I can justify plow use