One Hour One Life Forums

Cute: A young red-head is looking nervously at the world she has to explore, arms tucked behind her back.

Fresh player input is super important! it's the single part of play testing that can't be recreated.

COMMUNICATION: Extending speech length as suggested would add to the game, no question in my mind. Especially with the surge of new players coming from Steam. Teaching and aging are core elements of the game, but don't have to be in such odds with each other. It's artistic to add one character per year, but more realistic and helpful to gain speech as described by Torston (and many of us before). I once thought that sentence length should be earned with survival, but unskilled kids need to ask their questions to improve themselves.

CRAFTING: Has anyone stayed without finding Onetech? Hardcore gamers need it, but I figure folks still get their $20 worth without it? What's very special about OHOL vs other crafting-heavy games is that there are no invisible recipe books needed you can learn all recipes by watching other players interact with objects in the game.

MECHANICS: Multilife covered WASD. Double-clicking is also a non-option for a similar reason, I assume.

BABIES: The code has an advanced baby-spacing algorithm, and I don't see much room for improvement. It's left on us to manage the high risk-reward resource that kids are.

Izzytok had the old system figured out too.

Yikes. The pine panel discussion has a bustling separate thread for it.

As for the appreciation,
This game has that special social symbolic element to it, like many of Jason's games, but with an mmorpg foundation. His games are so touching that he literally got an art museum exhibit dedicated to one.

My biggest awe moment was looking over the heat mechanics code and seeing he implemented a Partial Differential Equation (2-3 years of college calculus) solver to numerically calculate your temperature every single time you move!
...scrapped for magic in v199 Heat Overhaul

Support from me!

edit: cool, we can play off-steam still. But I'd follow the game regardless.

I'm glad you're getting to choose the markets your game is in.

Mathematically, increasing sales by working with Steam will temporarily grow the active player base to a new steady-state size. (modeled as dx/dt = sales - x*attrition rate, where x is the active player base). So Catfive is right about a deluge of active players from increasing sales, before it evens out again.

For us players,

steady state active player population = sales / rate of quitting

If we want to grow the player base, its our job to help new players not quit.
(Jason's job is increasing sales, and balancing the quality of the game against how many players he can handle)

On top of Jason’s current proposal which helps assure bad players are noticeable, we still need help carrying out our intended punishment (exile). We also need fixes for massively exploitable game mechanics, and ways to reverse damages; otherwise the game is set up to encourage players who enjoy griefing and discourage players who enjoy the core game.

More specifically:

• Starving evil babies is unnecessarily difficult. They can jump out of the mother’s arms and run to the nursery spot with other babies. There, they can stack with other babies and be fed with misclicks. I recommend cursed babies be layered to the back of all baby stacks, and perhaps nerf baby movement.

• We need help cursing players that are moving or have complicated names. Options like “Curse you brother/murderer/[null]” to curse the closest brother/murderer/anyone. If the ambiguity is a problem, and you really want us to kill them to see their name on the bones, we’ll need help killing greifers (see next bullet)

• Killing greifers should be easier with groups because greifers rarely have teammates (just prevent twins+ if they have any curse score) and the non-violent masses are untrained in killing. For example, I like GreatShawn’s cleaner idea of helping someone put on armor. Also, send cursed players to the front of player stacks so they can be seen/ clicked on.

Other than that, I think Jason’s current implementation looks good;
The curse/murderer/victim stats show that most cursed players are killed way more than they are cursed — killing without cursing gives them a free shot at working evil in their next life. So the addition of memory with the TotalCurseScore helps point out mass griefers that were dipping under 10 CurrentCurseScore often, while still allowing innocents to redeem themselves.
Visible marks will help prevent griefers from being undetected — if you had only one life, everyone in your community would know you were evil.

So the question becomes: What should we farm instead of berries? What food can you farm with less hassle? Why do nice players get stuck trying to keep berries alive?

Feeding people takes work, and the quick turnover of the berry bush speaks volumes to its usefulness for kids, yummers, learners, and composters. As a centerpiece to civilizations, berry farms fall victim to group think, so taking care of them is a courageous act of altruism.
I hope there's a better food source, but I don't know of one aside from high tech milk.

This topic was an entertaining way to review WHAT NOT TO DO. Great job detailing some of the many behaviors that are inefficient for productivity.

While these won't outright ruin the game, imagine how frustrating it is to see these behaviors when you want the community to play efficiently.

Also, this topic has nothing to do with Pein's play style. There's no reason to reply with hate.

Examples on my mind:

• x resource x direction, ... z resource z direction
  (rabbits, bakery, forge, compost, other village, tailor, medic, etc.)

• Read xyz forums

• We are nomadic. Leave extra girls by ponds to start homes.

• Tend home if childbearing. Gather from far if male.

• Keep oven, compost farm, and sheep together for pies.

• Keep all babies; disperse if overpopulated.

• Priority order is survive, compost, yum foods, gather, build

Yes right on! I've seen this in a couple towns which made compost go to sh...
One fertile sheep left alone will fill about 6 other spaces with its lambs before they start decomposing. Then you need a couple extra spaces for dung production. Any less space and you have to clear the artery before pumping anything out.

Glad to see the shared dreams of mass compost!

Fixed and credited, thanks Blazier!