Trade, War and Mega Biomes

Left4twenty · 2019-05-30 02:59:47

One of the problems with trade in the game is how homogenous the landscape is. This is compounded by a homogenous technology path. Trade requires an imbalance in commodities that this homogenous set up does not allow for. One path to correct this is to add some parameter that will give a family a surplus to the point they can never use all of it. Meanwhile a family in a different location will have a surplus of more than they can ever use of a different resource. This is the dynamoc necessary for both trade, and war.
My proposal is something floated before, but presented now for the benefiys it will have towards the games direction.
The Mega Biome.
A biome so big that it almost can never run out if properly mnaged. Potentially five major biomes could be made to be mega biome eligible: grassland, prairie, swamp, badlands, and jungle.
The point of the mega biomes being that by rarity of a mega biome, there is only one in a very large area. And a new eve will be stuck with whichever is near. If other eves spawn nearby, they will also want the goods, and will fight or barter for them. If a family wants the benefit of another mega biomes rrsource bounty, its a long exodus, and there may be another family there already. They may defend it as harshly as your family would defend yours. So perhaps they want all some of your furs and you would like some of their logs?
Obviously some notes about some things that would need to happen to make a mega biome function work would be:
-eves never spawn inside a mega biome, possibly nearby one, but maybe never knowing what direction.
-mega biomes should be large enough that proper stewardship by making fenced areas to allow resources to "replenish" without ever running out for long
-mega biomes never spawn springs. Only mega swamps have water, by way of geese ponds
This will force towns to remain outside, with journeys into the biome and returning with goods requiring its own exchange network, or careful planning
-mega biomes are rare, but tied to eves, meaning 80-90% of the map remains unchanged

Last edited by Left4twenty (2019-05-30 03:01:45)

RodneyC86 · 2019-05-30 03:20:21

So to shorten it into a problem (Jason is a busy man, he wants conscise description of problems rather than solution suggestions)

Maps too homogenous -> towns all follow the same development path > all towns are basically the same and no trade occurs

lychee · 2019-05-30 04:27:07

RE: map homogeneity

One reason why maps are fairly homogenous in OHOL is because Jason uses a perlin noise algorithm to generate maps. This algorithm is resource efficient for the server, but it will never quite produce a map that is truly heterogeneous in the fashion that a hand-drawn map is or the real Earth itself is. If you've played enough games, the OHOL map starts to look similar no matter where you go, and that's a feature of the algorithm.

The perlin noise algorithm is also one reason why rivers are impossible for the current game (balance reasons aside), and oceans can come out looking weird (unless you go for an island map).

RodneyC86 · 2019-05-30 04:34:40

lychee wrote:

RE: map homogeneity
One reason why maps are fairly homogenous in OHOL is because Jason uses a perlin noise algorithm to generate maps. This algorithm is resource efficient for the server, but it will never quite produce a map that is truly heterogeneous in the fashion that a hand-drawn map is or the real Earth itself is. If you've played enough games, the OHOL map starts to look similar no matter where you go, and that's a feature of the algorithm.
The perlin noise algorithm is also one reason why rivers are impossible for the current game (balance reasons aside), and oceans can come out looking weird (unless you go for an island map).

Yeah I can understand that, it's one of the issues with procedural generation techniques. Not saying it's Jason's fault

lychee · 2019-05-30 04:58:35

RodneyC86 wrote:

Yeah I can understand that, it's one of the issues with procedural generation techniques. Not saying it's Jason's fault

I'm personally intrigued at the idea of using real life elevation maps as the basis for game maps. It's not unusual for developers to use layers of an elevation map (procedural) + temperature map (latitude/gradient based) + moisture map (procedural) to generate a game biome map, although personally I think it would be cool to load an existing public domain elevation map (like of Earth).

The Earth itself is large enough, and there's few enough people playing OHOL that you could literally pick any random spot on Earth as a seed and set that as the center for all civilization. Apply a few rotations and projections to Earth (which forces a different layers on top), and every server restart will essentially be an entirely different game that isn't easy to recognize (given that there's a hard limit on the number of tiles a player can walk/ride in a lifetime).

You could even take NASA's elevation maps for other planets too. >w< XD But if I keep going on like this, I'll definitely get carried away.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-30 04:59:37)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-05-30 02:59:47

Trade, War and Mega Biomes

#2 2019-05-30 03:20:21

Re: Trade, War and Mega Biomes

#3 2019-05-30 04:27:07

Re: Trade, War and Mega Biomes

#4 2019-05-30 04:34:40

Re: Trade, War and Mega Biomes

#5 2019-05-30 04:58:35

Re: Trade, War and Mega Biomes

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