Coming soon: Specialty Biome and Homland geographic banding

jasonrohrer · 2020-10-19 16:14:23

This idea was proposed by Twisted.

Why:

Homelands are somewhat confusing and magical (connected to wells, but why?) and don't correspond to the specialty biomes.
Specialty biomes are spread all over the place and don't really feel like regions.
Because of the random placement, finding a particular specialty biome is an exercise in trial and error.
You may have specialty biomes right near your home town that you can't access, can't build in, etc. They might block your building of local roads, for example.
Getting resources from someone else's specialty biome (aka trade) very often involves THEM coming to YOU and getting resources out of their specialty biome that is closest to you. You travel to find them, but not to reach their region.
BUT... all families need access to the non-special biomes, so we don't want to make a region that is 100% arctic, because even the gingers can't reasonably settle there for all their needs.

What:

Map layout and non-special biome placement will remain generally the same (swamp, green, yellow, and gray around "special" topographic rings)
Instead of being placed randomly in the "highest" topographic rings throughout the map, specialty biomes will occur in five horizontal bands.
The northern-most band will contain snow, the next band will contain mountains, the next band will contain jungle, and the south-most band will contain desert
Outside these bands (further north and south), there will be no special biomes, and gray mountains will exist wherever special biomes would normally be.
These bands will also become the permanent "homeland" areas of each skin tone (with the white language-expert folks having the mountain band as their homeland). Each skin tone can build and breed freely anywhere in their horizontal band, which will stretch infinitely to the east and west, and homelands will be unhooked from well-building.
Eves will be placed in their appropriate bands
Note that each geographic band will also contain ALL of the non-special biomes, in the current layout. The only change is where the special biome would be. Before, it would be random. Now, it will be picked based on which geographic band we're in.

Expectations:

Homeland regions, and the act of returning home, will make more visual sense. Coming back to a region where there's snow around... sigh of relief.
Finding a given specialty biome will be more intuitive. Walk south or north, depending on what you're looking for.
Finding more of a given specialty biome (like when looking for a particular resource) will be much easier. Just keep exploring the highest topographic rings in your current band by walking east or west. (Before, if you were looking for more snow, you could keep looking at the "top" of the mountain regions, but you might find yourself in a large patch of desert or jungle).
Trade will involve both finding the appropriate people AND visiting the appropriate region, because the appropriate people will automatically live in that region.
Will no longer have weirdness of snow existing right near the jungle.
White language expert families will have more mountains near their wells, giving them an iron boost to make up for their lack of specialty resources

NOTE: Twisted's original idea involved "no man's land" bands between the bands, where there's only mountain, as depicted in his images below. I'm going to skip that part of the idea for now, and just have the bands and homelands butt up against each other. I can always add the no-man's land buffer zones later, if needed.

Old map:

New Map:

New map with bands highlighted:

ahead · 2020-10-19 16:52:49

will wells still spawn on a grid?
will white people be able to have children outside of the four belts on the infinite mountains southward and northward
will this make trade actually happen?

white people still have nothing to offer, maybe introduce something all people will want and something that's easy to transport so trade could be done easier ?

Last edited by ahead (2020-10-19 16:55:33)

jasonrohrer · 2020-10-19 18:25:44

I don't think twisted's maps show this, but each family would have the same width "band" for their homeland. Maybe 300 tiles tall.

Beyond that, further to the North and South would be the end of the specialty biomes entirely. So Gingers or Desert folks wouldn't have "bigger" homelands than anyone else. In those regions, there will just be mountains in the "highest spots" in the topographical map.

White folks would only have their official homeland in the middle, even though there ARE mountains in the "no man's lands" further North and South.

jasonrohrer · 2020-10-19 18:28:11

Interesting question about white folks. I suppose we could experiment with making them homeland-free, so they really can roam anywhere and join villages.

Wells will still spawn on grids, and tap out iron mines, etc. The rest of the mechanics won't change.

Caprys · 2020-10-19 18:47:28

ahead wrote:

will this make trade actually happen?

lol, no.

NoTruePunk · 2020-10-19 18:55:30

jasonrohrer wrote:

Interesting question about white folks. I suppose we could experiment with making them homeland-free, so they really can roam anywhere and join villages.

That might bring back some of the old nomadic gameplay people seem to miss, with the benefit of the new leadership features to coordinate and give people a beacon to home to. Some interesting trade and social situations could come about where the reception of the family's arrival is contextualized by the presents they arrive with and the family's history with their hosts. Trade is basically a multi-generational endeavor anyway with the thousands of meters between villages.

We'd need swaddles though.

Spoonwood · 2020-10-19 19:08:15

jasonrohrer wrote:

These bands will also become the permanent "homeland" areas of each skin tone (with the white language-expert folks having the mountain band as their homeland). Each skin tone can build and breed freely anywhere in their horizontal band, which will stretch infinitely to the east and west, and homelands will be unhooked from well-building.

Is this something which will turn on or off depending on player population? Or if a server has less than 15 people on it, will players not be able to have children if outside of their geographical homeland? For the record, homelands currently enable fertility control on all servers.

jasonrohrer wrote:

White language expert families will have more mountains near their wells, giving them an iron boost to make up for their lack of specialty resources

To speak more clearly, such only increases the probability that white language expert families will have an iron boost.

Also, why is the minor case stated here as if it will be the most relevant thing effected? Nowhere does Jason say anything about the expected iron amount for non-white families. There will exist a lower frequency of iron veins for non-white families. There's already a longstanding iron issue, and sometimes that means *no iron at all* for a family from their well site, as described in this Github report: https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/issues/691 Likely, if the iron system is not reworked also, this system will also increase the frequency for which a family doesn't get any iron from their well site, since it will likely happen more regularly to non-white families. Non-white families that can't make it to a shallow well, probably need all the luck that they can get. I didn't read anything about the water system changing, did you? And if they can't make it to a shallow well (and not even a smithing hammer), they have more dead content *for them*, can't rebuild from scratch as much, and there will be more Eves spawned due to their families dying out sooner.

It also more clearly discriminates whites from non-whites even more than before, since they are more likely to have iron, while non-white families aren't as likely to have iron. And whites are likely to have more iron, and non-whites are likely to have less iron when they do have iron.

I would not be surprised if this results in more Eves just not having children at all. But, that ALSO means more forced Eves. And then the distance between families spreads out more, making even finding another village more and more of an issue over time, since it involves more travel.

Bigserver2 should get wiped before any new changes like this take place.

Didn't anyone see what happened during the recent sale? The result was little but Eve camps, pre-Eve camps, and early stages. There does exist a strong enough possibility that such will result in something similar for non-white families, which ARE the majority. Since a situation like what happened during the sale wasn't good, how could this change be good?

Spoonwood · 2020-10-19 19:10:24

"My family couldn't get iron, because they weren't white."

Who in their right mind thinks that such is not indicative of racist game design? Who in their right mind thinks that such doesn't come from a racist?

Dodge · 2020-10-19 19:15:35

That's cool but you still force players to play a certain way instead of them having to make a decision about what is the best way to handle a particular situation.

Nice QOL update but what is your endgame with that?

I dont know if you played the game recently but it's extremly boring there's really nothing to look forward in the long run, Be Eve, make town, town dies, repeat.

What happens with these towns that are being built? what do they become? absolutly nothing, instead of having something interesting happen with everything that is being made by the players nothing actually happens.

You wait for that story between civilisations made in that persistent world, but nothing.

The rift was SHIT for multiple reasons mainly because it was WAY too small but at least there was something exciting going on, each arc had a story and a common goal that players could reach together.

Right now the game just feels pointless, make the new racing car, cool... awesome... great... now what?

Twisted · 2020-10-19 19:20:38

Spoonwood wrote:

Nowhere does Jason say anything about the expected iron amount for non-white families. There will exist a lower frequency of iron veins for non-white families.

The expected amount of iron for desert/jungle/arctic families should stay exactly the same, while the expected amount of iron for the language family will increase.

QuirkySmirkyIan · 2020-10-19 19:26:56

Gingers can live in snow biome so can we have tribal hut (bamboo) buildings in jungle and sandstone buildings in desert?

Last edited by QuirkySmirkyIan (2020-10-19 19:27:18)

Caprys · 2020-10-19 19:33:52

Can't the whites somehow become the trade race. With an actual trade system.

NoTruePunk · 2020-10-19 19:34:02

Spoonwood wrote:

"My family couldn't get iron, because they weren't white."
Who in their right mind thinks that such is not indicative of racist game design? Who in their right mind thinks that such doesn't come from a racist?

What? Everyone will have iron calm down

Caprys · 2020-10-19 19:40:03

QuirkySmirkyIan wrote:

Gingers can live in snow biome so can we have tribal hut (bamboo) buildings in jungle and sandstone buildings in desert?

I would like that more then having every fam living in the same way.

Spoonwood · 2020-10-19 19:49:55

Twisted wrote:

Spoonwood wrote:
Nowhere does Jason say anything about the expected iron amount for non-white families. There will exist a lower frequency of iron veins for non-white families.

The expected amount of iron for desert/jungle/arctic families should stay exactly the same, while the expected amount of iron for the language family will increase.

Looking again, it looks like you're right (could be buggy though).

I still have questions about fertility, and whether the old Eve spawning system is appropriate for this sort of setup.

If you're ginger and need sulfur/other desert resource or want to gift them something/unlock resources for them (assuming playing after a server wipe), you'll have to venture south, and then find an expert waystone to get to blacks. Other examples work kind of similarly, and non-white families *always* will have to pass near white areas. Even more like it's white mission to bring all the families together as one review on Steam I read once wrote.

It could be more time to travel and exchange/gift resources in some cases. New players will probably more likely to experience *less* richness of the world, since they won't be likely to find multiple biomes when out exploring.

Spoonwood · 2020-10-19 19:51:30

NoTruePunk wrote:

Spoonwood wrote:
"My family couldn't get iron, because they weren't white."
Who in their right mind thinks that such is not indicative of racist game design? Who in their right mind thinks that such doesn't come from a racist?
What? Everyone will have iron calm down

No, they won't. Some black, brown, jungle Eve, or their children will place a wellsite on some spot with no iron mines along the ley line with a black Eve. I saw that happen last week, and it's not hard to do.

fug · 2020-10-19 19:59:41

Spoonwood wrote:

NoTruePunk wrote:
Spoonwood wrote:
"My family couldn't get iron, because they weren't white."
Who in their right mind thinks that such is not indicative of racist game design? Who in their right mind thinks that such doesn't come from a racist?
What? Everyone will have iron calm down
No, they won't. Some black, brown, jungle Eve, or their children will place a wellsite on some spot with no iron mines along the ley line with a black Eve. I saw that happen last week, and it's not hard to do.

If you make a well with no iron on the ley line you can make a second well to trigger iron nodes.

wondible · 2020-10-19 20:01:09

Twisted wrote:

Spoonwood wrote:
Nowhere does Jason say anything about the expected iron amount for non-white families. There will exist a lower frequency of iron veins for non-white families.

The expected amount of iron for desert/jungle/arctic families should stay exactly the same, while the expected amount of iron for the language family will increase.

Depends how it is done. Right now there are valleys between special biomes, sometimes only a tile or so wide, but sometimes wider, which might have hit an iron spot. If these gaps are removed the iron chance may be *slightly* less.

----

I don't think this will affect tutorials much, you can't really get to special biome tech in one life anyway. No more trucks in donkeytown though. And no more apocalypse towers, unless they haul the stones down to donkeytown.

Dodge · 2020-10-19 20:05:16

Spoonwood wrote:

NoTruePunk wrote:
Spoonwood wrote:
"My family couldn't get iron, because they weren't white."
Who in their right mind thinks that such is not indicative of racist game design? Who in their right mind thinks that such doesn't come from a racist?
What? Everyone will have iron calm down
No, they won't. Some black, brown, jungle Eve, or their children will place a wellsite on some spot with no iron mines along the ley line with a black Eve. I saw that happen last week, and it's not hard to do.

You forgot to add the gingers to the list but i guess it's intentional since it doesn't fit your narrative of "tHe GaMe Is RaCiSt", or maybe you dont consider them white, who knows

Even though i agree that the current way iron is dealt with is dumb and uninteresting for players always screaming racist or sexist or wathever makes you look like a clown.

Oh shit i forgot, stop arguing with spoon

antking:]# · 2020-10-19 20:20:45

Could it be possible to make rivers using this type of band generation?

Having water tiles (Blue tiles) spawn their own band creating a "river" while oceans and lakes are still not possible I think that using bands it should be feasable to make "rivers" which could have uses such as specialized transport, or fishing a lot of fishing

Besides the river thing I do think that white peoples should be a nomadic playstyle, because then whites become the traveling merchants of the word picking up supplies from villages and bringing them to other villages

And I really like the band idea, because it also allows for more biomes (more bands) to be added.... because before , in the ring, system you face the problem that every time you add a new biome all the rings will get smaller and smaller

Coconut Fruit · 2020-10-19 20:28:18

I'm always much more excited for new game mechanics than new content.

Im glad, Jason, that you are improving the game, but I'm sad you are not improving it for new players. And that is what this game needs to keep them playing the game.

jasonrohrer wrote:

304 people lived to 60 on their first life and then never played again.

Can you imagine that?

On the other hand, 2,551 people lived only one life and died younger than 10.
1,147 lived only one life and died younger than 5.
What a waste of $20 for these people, wow.

This is the real issue that should have the highest priority to fix. We need new people stay with the game.

Built-in recipe book (just like in mobile version of this game) and bigger view size would be a great start.

Coconut Fruit · 2020-10-19 20:39:50

Gingers will probably have much easier and bigger access to kerosene, tho getting rubber and especially horses will be difficult for them.

For the other hand blacks should have tons of horses, but you can only ride one at a time, so it may be hard to share them in bigger quantities.

Caprys · 2020-10-19 21:11:20

antking:]# wrote:

Could it be possible to make rivers using this type of band generation?
Having water tiles (Blue tiles) spawn their own band creating a "river" while oceans and lakes are still not possible I think that using bands it should be feasable to make "rivers" which could have uses such as specialized transport, or fishing a lot of fishing
Besides the river thing I do think that white peoples should be a nomadic playstyle, because then whites become the traveling merchants of the word picking up supplies from villages and bringing them to other villages
And I really like the band idea, because it also allows for more biomes (more bands) to be added.... because before , in the ring, system you face the problem that every time you add a new biome all the rings will get smaller and smaller

Whites could have port towns. The rivers their speciality. They could be the ones that transport goods and people across the rivers in gradually more advanced ships. God, I'm starting to dream again.

Gogo · 2020-10-19 21:46:42

For 1st - it was my idea! xD

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9443

For 2nd - ROADS. With old map Eve's were spawning toward west, I suppose now the same but families will have vertical distance from each other. That just means we need more roads, like one vertical paved road and roads to that paved road. No? <this goes to 3rd...>

For 3rd - can planes have extra load, more like truck? Can we build landing strips in alive towns? And make couple of them for each biome, can they be permanent?

Last edited by Gogo (2020-10-19 22:05:56)

Spoonwood · 2020-10-19 21:48:15

Dodge wrote:

That's cool but you still force players to play a certain way instead of them having to make a decision about what is the best way to handle a particular situation.
Nice QOL update but what is your endgame with that?

There's not supposed to a steady state if I recall what the "Everything Runs Out" post says. So, there is no end game. Or the end game is just death of the lineage, and death of the town. The end game is that everyone is doomed, and doomed by design.

Dodge wrote:

I dont know if you played the game recently but it's extremly boring there's really nothing to look forward in the long run, Be Eve, make town, town dies, repeat.

What could there to be to look forward to in the long run when everything is doomed a priori?

Dodge wrote:

The rift was SHIT for multiple reasons mainly because it was WAY too small but at least there was something exciting going on, each arc had a story and a common goal that players could reach together.

All rifts got reset, and were doomed a priori to get wiped also. Additionally, Dodge since you want to think through the finite map thoroughly, I encourage you to think through what it needs to be like if say server6 filled up, with the current system of how servers with, with server1, then s2, ... , s5 filling up as new players start joining. Some experienced players, perhaps the majority on discord, check bigserver2 as a custom server, and during a sale some experienced players may be likely to do that. If s6 got filled up, how would some finite map (or even the current system when I think about it), filled with almost entirely, if not entirely, new players work?

Dodge wrote:

Right now the game just feels pointless, make the new racing car, cool... awesome... great... now what?

I don't know what you value Dodge. But, I think you're going to have to figure that sort of thing out for yourself, since if you're doomed to die by design, and your family is doomed to die by design, I think that finding something satisfying will end up as your own personal responsibility. Maybe it's something other than playing OHOL, since perhaps other games don't have a philosophy that dooms everyone to a finite end.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-10-19 16:14:23

Coming soon: Specialty Biome and Homland geographic banding

#2 2020-10-19 16:52:49

Re: Coming soon: Specialty Biome and Homland geographic banding

#3 2020-10-19 18:25:44

Re: Coming soon: Specialty Biome and Homland geographic banding

#4 2020-10-19 18:28:11

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#8 2020-10-19 19:10:24

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#9 2020-10-19 19:15:35

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#11 2020-10-19 19:26:56

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