Update: What Grave is This?

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-18 21:42:28

I spent quite a bit of time this week improving the family tree browser. Cause of death, including animals and murder, is now in place, along with a display of the oldest-known ancestor at the top of every family tree page, and a display of the deepest-generation descendants at the bottom of every family tree page. Thus, you can bookmark your character's page and return to it later to see how far your descendants have gotten.

In-game, the biggest change this week is that graves of known people now display their name and relationship when you mouse over the grave. This only works for undisturbed graves, and only for people who were alive during your lifetime. Bone piles don't count after they are moved, so leave Grandma's bones alone, please.

Another fix: Ancient stone floors now hug walls properly.

But the other big thing going on this week is a bug hunt, as described in detail here:

http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1648

You may not realize it, but every game of OHOL that you play is being quietly recorded in a compact, text-only format in your recordedGames folder. Copy one of these files into your playbackGame folder and launch the game. Like magic, you can watch a ghost version of you play the game exactly as you played it before, with all server events fully simulated. This is not a video, but instead a frame-by-frame simulation of all events that occurred, such as keyboard and mouse input.

Turns out that this bug hunt unearthed a bug in recorded times values in these game recordings, which has now been fixed. Should you encounter this "bouncing for 10 seconds" bug, your recording will hopefully capture in perfectly now.

A lot of coding this week. I'm aiming to get a larger content update out next week.

Angel Carrillo · 2018-05-18 22:33:44

Thanks man! Now I can see my Mother Jackie when she's and dead *and undisturbed shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.*

Last edited by Angel Carrillo (2018-05-18 23:33:34)

happynova · 2018-05-18 22:52:25

Thank you thank you thank you! I wanted this so much. It was honestly kind of distressing coming across a fresh grave and having no idea who it was or how I should feel about it.

Spockulon · 2018-05-18 23:06:25

Thank you, Jason! I'm still holding out for grave stones or memorials, so we could organize a cemetery if we chose, however this is a fantastic addition as is!

Finally, we'll have an answer to "Has anyone seen Mom lately?" LOL

thewhiterabbit21 · 2018-05-19 05:13:49

I love this update! I've been wanting a grave marker and this is just as good.
My work around before, whenever I wondered if someone has died, I usually checked the family tree site. This is still helpful, especially if I can't find a grave or someone moved it.

Last edited by thewhiterabbit21 (2018-05-19 05:14:15)

Shaun · 2018-05-19 10:15:52

Could some way be added to move the bones while keeping the name on them? Being able to make a proper graveyard would be nice. (Not to mention many people die in very inconvenient locations, so moving them is pretty much required to keep using the area)

Dawn · 2018-05-19 12:42:01

Thank you so much for your hard work! This update is super cool!

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-19 16:54:57

Well, this is meant to encourage people to go to the Elephant Graveyard to die.

Though I guess this concept is a myth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants%27_graveyard

But Elephants still do other interesting things connected with death:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_ … ath_ritual

Trip · 2018-05-19 18:05:27

While I get the idea you're going for, I feel like the graves should be able to be moved once without destroying the information. Being able to make a graveyard just outside of town, rather than simply having piles of bones around, seems more appealing.

And I'm sure it really goes without saying; fantastic work on this game.

Spockulon · 2018-05-19 18:30:33

Trip wrote:

While I get the idea you're going for, I feel like the graves should be able to be moved once without destroying the information. Being able to make a graveyard just outside of town, rather than simply having piles of bones around, seems more appealing.
And I'm sure it really goes without saying; fantastic work on this game.

I agree!! I had a very fulfilling life once as our town undertaker. I believe it actually might have been in [F/D]ucks - town. I built a little graveyard next to the stone storage room with the locked door. I planned out aisles and rows using flat stones as walkways. It was beautiful and I was very proud of my accomplishment. I was very diligent in trying to keep family graves together.

The ability to move the bones without losing the information would enhance this experience. I can understand if there are coding and logistical issues with this however.

Jason, am I correct in assuming that, under the grave system we are asking for, each grave would be it's own unique object in some way? I'm not sure how this is implemented in coding (again, all I can offer here is input from the perspective of a player/end-user, as I know very little about coding. My specialty is in game theory and logic anyway). I remember a recent conversation in regards to the decay system about potentially adding object properties. It seemed at the time you were hinting that would be quite an undertaking. So I can easily imagine how generations of graves on the same server, each being unique, could cause server lag.

Perhaps the graves could still decay, as they do, but I'm unsure if that mitigates any of the performance concerns.

Additionally, Jason, I know you just gave us signs. Knowing the philosophies you are building the game around another possibility is to use signs as grave markers. Are they expensive? Yes. Can they be griefed? Yes, usually. But if someone meant that much to you in-game, doesn't that work and effort make your memorial to them even more significant?

As always Jason, I'm just happy to have a quality update where you have done your best to meet the needs and wishes of your players while maintaining a good in-game balance.

YAHG · 2018-05-19 21:39:59

<3 ty ty now we know that jabroney we sent out on an errand is dead!

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-20 02:58:05

Yeah, the problem with moving graves is that the info about who died there needs to travel with the bones as you carry them.

Currently, this information is not being stored in the map at all.

It's just something that is sent to the client one time when someone dies, and more importantly, sent to the client WHILE the person in question is still alive (they're in the process of dying, and their final death message hasn't been received by the client yet). So the client knows the person's name and relationship info. Neither the server nor client is tracking this after someone dies.

That's why only graves for deaths that occurred in your lifetime are labeled. Otherwise, the information about the person's name and relationship are not known by either client or server. And thus, a long-term curated graveyard doesn't make sense, because future generations won't be able to see those labels. (Though a graveyard still makes sense, and signs still make sense.)

Because you only see relationship labels for people living during your lifetime, I don't need to worry about too many GREAT GREAT GREATs being displayed on the status bar. The relationship name for any living person always fits there, so I can be sloppy about that.

Changing this behavior would require a substantial overhaul of a bunch of stuff, long-terms storage and transmission of dead people's info, etc. I mean, if hundreds of people lived/died in the village today, how would that info be transmitted to a newly-born client?

The grave labels were a solution to a more immediate problem: missing a friend, wondering where they are, and then finding bones and being unsure....

breezeknight · 2018-05-20 07:30:16

i think at least the Eve's bones should contain the info about her, even if moved

& maybe there should be a special option to mark bones as nameable before moving them, this would remove the automatic tracking necessity but still give those special persons in someone's life an oportunity to be honored
it could be an object spawned with every new grave, pickable from that grave & if applied to those bones, then this would make them to a named object themselves
i also think, those named bones should be the only ones containing the information remaining, passed down for all people living in that place later, every other grave could just loose after an hour or so the option to name them & those bones should just disappear as well maybe

in any case burial rituals is the most basic form of culture & tradition, so thank you Jason

- - -

Last edited by breezeknight (2018-05-20 07:32:29)

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-20 18:15:00

No objects are named or store/contain names.

The client gets names for all living people and remembers them. The client also gets lineage info for all living people and computes a relationship name for each person.

When someone dies and a grave is created, the server just sends a very simple "PlayerID grave at x,y" message.

The server doesn't remember that there's a grave there or know who died there or what their name was or what their relationship was.

The client does the rest. It checks if PlayerID is known, and what their name was, and what their relationship was, and then remembers that grave spot tagged with that info, client-side.

As you can see, none of this stuff works beyond the lifetime of the client. So there is simply no info available about graves from the past. Their names are not known.

Moving a grave during a lifetime is possible server-side, and maybe I will implement that.

You will notice that the above implementation of names and relationships is very lightweight, simple, and shallow. It is meant to "get the job done" for living people that you mouse over, and it works perfectly for this.

It also has the nice property of being BOUNDED. The list of names the client needs to learn cannot grow arbitrarily long, nor can the lineage info. We will never get to the point where the server is sending the client 10+ MB of name and relationship info. There is technically no limit to how long a family line can be, if we're including information about people long-dead.

Yes, I could implement deeper tracking with some kind of stale timeout to remove old data, etc. But I don't think this is needed.

Trip · 2018-05-21 06:19:05

Makes sense.

Maybe sometime later you could add something to send the info back to the server when picked up the first time, just as if the player died again. If you just did it once it wouldn't ruin the server and would allow for a one time movement of bones.

That's what I would do, anyway. Haha

Christoffer · 2018-05-21 09:53:49

Trip wrote:

Maybe sometime later you could add something to send the info back to the server when picked up the first time, just as if the player died again. If you just did it once it wouldn't ruin the server and would allow for a one time movement of bones.

This is a valid idea, but it needn't be limited to one time. To spell it out:
1. By design, grave data is stored in each client and not on server.
2. If a player picks up a grave, the player's client could remember the data of that grave while carrying it around (minus location, which is no longer accurate).
3. When the player drops the grave, his/her client could send a message to the server (original data plus new location), whereupon all clients would get new grave data from the server.

This would fit with the client/server design, I believe. It's still non-zero work though, so whether it's worth it (compared to everything else that is also important) will be up to Jason to decide.

jasonrohrer · 2018-05-21 19:23:01

Okay, this has been improved in the code.

Servers now tell clients when a grave moves.

Clients now update the location of a known grave if they receive one of these grave-move messages from the server.

The bone pile now counts as a grave object.

Thus, moving a bone pile of a labeled grave causes the label to go with it.

This does not change the permanence of grave labels (they still don't last beyond a lifetime, etc.)

More ways to decorate graves, etc, are coming in the future.

Spockulon · 2018-05-21 19:41:11

jasonrohrer wrote:

...
More ways to decorate graves, etc, are coming in the future.

This, I am pretty excited about. When I think of that 10,000 foot, top-down view of humanity I think grave sites stick out as a concept that is prominently important to humans throughout history. Tombs, religions, pilgrimages, tradition. It gives us another cultural facet to play with.

Trip · 2018-05-22 05:19:02

Beautiful. That really thrills my jimmies, sir! This game just keeps getting better and better.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-05-18 21:42:28

Update: What Grave is This?

#2 2018-05-18 22:33:44

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#3 2018-05-18 22:52:25

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#4 2018-05-18 23:06:25

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#5 2018-05-19 05:13:49

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#6 2018-05-19 10:15:52

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#7 2018-05-19 12:42:01

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#8 2018-05-19 16:54:57

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#9 2018-05-19 18:05:27

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#10 2018-05-19 18:30:33

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#11 2018-05-19 21:39:59

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#12 2018-05-20 02:58:05

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#13 2018-05-20 07:30:16

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#14 2018-05-20 18:15:00

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#15 2018-05-21 06:19:05

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#16 2018-05-21 09:53:49

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#17 2018-05-21 19:23:01

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#18 2018-05-21 19:41:11

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

#19 2018-05-22 05:19:02

Re: Update: What Grave is This?

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