a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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First of all, great game. I'm very impressed and excited by one hour one life. So, keep up the good work.
I'm writing this message in hopes to either improve the game for everyone including Jason Rohrer or at lease a better understanding.
I noticed from my last play session that there is a disease in one hour one life.
This disease kills more families than starvation, infanticide, or bears.
This disease is unavoidable, meaning no matter how advance or prepared a family may be, they will be effected by this disease.
This disease can't even be prevented by anyone, including Jason Rohrer.
I call it Nocturnal Infertility!
It means PLAYERS ARE GOING TO BED!!!
Ok, this part explains in deeper details why and how this can prevent societies or family lines from increasing beyond certain a point.
The main game mechanic where when players join the game the are assigned a mother, and if that is not possible, they become an eve mean that the total population of people in one hour one life (OHOL) is equal to the number of players at that time. (This includes all servers)
# of players == size of total population
This means that a change in the number of players effects the total population. Now in OHOL the way that population change is handed is births and deaths.
Σ Joining players + Σ Replaying after death == Σ Births
Σ Leaving players + Σ Killed players but are going to be reborn == Σ deaths
So the total birthrate in OHOL is equal to the deathrate and the rate of change of player population.
d(# of players) + d(deaths) == d(births)
(Now I'm assuming that the game algorithm will make women give birth if available first before making an eve and a birth is assigned at random among all available women)
Now if the player population never changed then those who die will become the next generation and are given to the same women, there will be a few eves now due to randomness, but for the most part families should be sustainable since they can replace their dead. During this time, raising a male or female should be about the same since the families' futures is secured by fixed family size.
if d(# of players) == 0, then
d(death) == d(births),
d(size of families) == 0,
worth of male == worth of female
Sadly, player population almost never stays the same. In fact, it is cyclic. Players, have work, sleep, school, etc. that happens on a daily cycle and a weekly cycle.
So there is a population boom that happens daily, mothers are giving birth to an estimate of 20 birth per life time. They don't have the resources for that high of birthrate so there is an increase of infanticide which also increases birthrates. During this time, males are highly valued since they will limit the infanticide. Luckily, eves are made during this time which reduce the infanticide and high birthrate. The side effect of having eves though is there are more families.
When d(# of players) >> 0,
d(births) == women are pooping babies,
d(size of families) == maximum sustainable birthrate,
worth of male > worth of female
d(# of families) == almost d(# of players)
But then there is Nocturnal Infertility that happens daily, and everything goes the opposite way, women barely given births, families have executive resources but not a population to replace themselves. During this time, females are extremely valuable, since they are the only way for the family to persist.
When d(# of players) << 0,
d(births) == barely any,
d(size of families) == shrinking to nonexistence,
worth of male << worth of female
# of families == about # of players
This is a barrier that can prevent societies from progressing. When Nocturnal Infertility hits, it hits all families equally, including the families that are successful. Last time, I was the last female with baskets of carrot pies, but I only had 5 births, all boys. I let them die in hopes that they will become females that can continue some other family as a female. But since there was an recent increase of families, family lines will tend to be cut short, and long family lines will only happen by luck. This is all due to Nocturnal Infertility.
Now there is really nothing we can do to stop Nocturnal Infertility for everyone, but we may be able to prevent Nocturnal Infertility for some families. If we want to have a society that can survive the Nocturnal Infertility, it must be able to increase its birthrate above the birthrate of other families. Changing the distribution of birth among women.
Now if this will be done or not, that is up to Jason Rohrer, but I would like for some societies to survive Nocturnal Infertility.
I think that different forms of birthcontrol should be in the game. Some to decrease it, and other to increase it, some permanent and others temporary, some accessible in early game, and others requiring better technology and tools. I think that a form of sex should be in the game where a man can increase the chance of a woman giving birth to overcome Nocturnal Infertility.
I would like your opinions or/and ideas about Nocturnal Infertility.
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Tell me about it, on my last play-through I birthed only one child. That child ran off and got killed somehow, meaning end of the line for my family's farm.
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So what I'm getting from this is that we need more Australian players. What could Jason do to make them feel more at home? Dye the wolves yellow and increase their appetite for babies? Make bears drop from trees? Make women glow?
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Those would be cool, but the population of Australia is less than a tenth compared to the US, and even if OHOL was an international game, there would still be periods of Nocturnal Infertility.
Truthfully, Nocturnal Infertility is unavoidable, but what is avoidable is having all families be kill by it. Breaking the 22 generation family would only happen if the algorithm choose so under the current situation. I recommend adding a why for women to increase their chance of getting a child. Do this action would decrease the chance of other women from getting a child, but during nocturnal infertility, births become a very valuable resource.
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all this is still going to be reliant on the player population.
as players go to sleep, either some families get wiped out, or all families suffer a burden.
so either NPCs have to be added, or, people who died during living lineage should spawn in the same village next time they log in (so the family line is preserved offline)
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or the game gets big enough that enough people are playing the game at all hours of the day and night. This is still a new game y'all give it time to grow. I like the slow hours personally the map is 700 times the surface area of Jupiter something like 1500 Earths with that being said sometimes I like to find new unexplored area and set up shop for the future by myself.
Maybe you guys have to find other ways to be happy with the game other than growing your family. Seems something like what guilds and organize teams would be for. But how do you start one on the same Main server? Pretty hard which means if you don't like the game as is you can always create a server and tweak how you like it
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So what I'm getting from this is that we need more Australian players. What could Jason do to make them feel more at home? Dye the wolves yellow and increase their appetite for babies? Make bears drop from trees? Make women glow?
I'm from Australia, the game is fine as is, it just needs more time to spread on youtube and such till more countries have it.
NPC's aren't an option though are they?
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I don't want npc's in OHOL. I just imagine the villagers of minecraft. And if they are implemented, then most likely, we players would find ways to exploit them. Most I like knowing that other people are people.
What I'm trying to say is the problem isn't not enough players at night, nor too many during the day, but the transition period between the two will cause problems. If a player gets on during the slowest hour meaning lease number of players, the birthrate would be higher than a few hours before.
Now as more countries join, the problem will actually worsen. To see what I mean, take a look at a world map of population by Longitude.
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My entire village seemingly died as everyone went to go eat dinner. All of a sudden everyone's dead and gone, we have tons of food and were booming.
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Hate to be the resident necromancer, but this thread is interesting. Has anything been done to combat this? I think someone said keeping your satiation bar full increases your chances of being picked for a baby when a player joins. Is that a myth? (I think that was a comment on one of HoneyBunnyGames' videos.) Maybe not a strong effect, but it could give a person some control. I would hazard a guess it's not strong enough to defeat this cyclical problem, though.
Maybe we can hope that once (if) the tech tree proceeds past modern age we get suspended animation/sleeping pods that let people go into stasis and wake up to continue the same life the next day (assuming the pod hasn't been destroyed during the time between). That would be something else.
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Is that a myth?
Yes. It was a suggestion tough. The issue I see with this is encouraging people to overeat...
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Maybe we can hope that once (if) the tech tree proceeds past modern age we get suspended animation/sleeping pods that let people go into stasis and wake up to continue the same life the next day
Or we get NPCs...
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There are three main population booms on servers, America, Europe and Australia. Also the infertility doesnt really affect the game if you are playing on server 1 or 2
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There are three main population booms on servers, America, Europe and Australia. Also the infertility doesnt really affect the game if you are playing on server 1 or 2
While this is true for server 1 it is only half-true for server 2.
See this nice data collected by thundersen
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4788
Unfortunately server 1 is extremely laggy for me.
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Hate to be the resident necromancer, but this thread is interesting. Has anything been done to combat this? I think someone said keeping your satiation bar full increases your chances of being picked for a baby when a player joins. Is that a myth? (I think that was a comment on one of HoneyBunnyGames' videos.) Maybe not a strong effect, but it could give a person some control. I would hazard a guess it's not strong enough to defeat this cyclical problem, though. [...]
TY! I've been linking this in discussions since the OP realized this effect really early on.
For those interested in controlling their birth rate, the current mechanic is warmth...
(server code)(and it PEEVES me!)
I (and anyone) can increase my birth rate up to 6 times (grassland vs jungle) or usually 2x (grassland vs desert) by being warm. If there's 15 mothers half as warm as me on the server, I cut their birth rates down by ~6%. For standing in a jungle infested with mosquitos. Or standing idle on a desert corner eating 1 berry each year.
If I work hard and clothe myself fully, my temperature reaches only 50% perfect, and I risk a mosquito overheating me, in turn killing my baby.
Mainly the jungle update made this mechanic obsolete. We deserve more challenging and rewarding ways to affect our birth rate. Which might mean just leaving it to our parenting skills.
Warmth per biome (naked) 0 - 0.5:
Grassland: 0.0705
Desert: 0.158
Jungle: 0.456
Last edited by betame (2018-12-18 15:30:44)
Morality is the interpretation of what is best for the well-being of humankind.
List of Guides | Resources per Food | Yum? | Temperature | Crafting Info: https://onetech.info
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Can this game support playermade translations? If so the game could maybe spread to non-western markets better.
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For those interested in controlling their birth rate, the current mechanic is warmth...
(server code)(and it PEEVES me!)
I (and anyone) can increase my birth rate up to 6 times (grassland vs jungle) or usually 2x (grassland vs desert) by being warm. If there's 15 mothers half as warm as me on the server, I cut their birth rates down by ~6%. For standing in a jungle infested with mosquitos. Or standing idle on a desert corner eating 1 berry each year.
Well, up to a point. The max rate is (on average) one child every 2.5 minutes which is 0.4 children per minute. If the global rate is currently, say, 0.2 children per minute (i.e. half the steady-state rate, i.e. we're in a population fall-off), even if you're the perfect temperature and have a six-times advantage you'll still only double your birth rate back up to the max.
The temperature-weighting mechanism only comes into play if population is falling, and the amount of difference it makes is limited by the rate at which the population is falling. If it's a slow decline, the weighting barely matters.
... and conversely, if it's a fast decline, the weighting can matter a lot in deciding how many babies you will have, BUT it still doesn't matter because a fast decline means you're on one of the downstream servers (only the downstream servers have large population fluxes; the upstream servers stay stable at their soft cap) and if you're on a downstream server your lineage is doomed anyway.
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Nocturnal infertility is frustrating... Last night I had an absolutely perfect Eve run. It was everything I could have asked for. Even the RP was good! It was a great spot - not perfect, but good; challenging, but we made it work! I kept all my kids alive. Everyone in the family was smart and worked hard, even the somewhat-new players. We taught, we learned, and I died happy surrounded by an appreciative and thriving family.
Of my two great-granddaughters: one died at 35 with only three children, the other died of old age with only three children. And that was that.
Alas.
But. The point is there's really nothing you can do about it, short of redistributing all the players so that they're evenly spread throughout the world's time zones. The game-playing population rises and falls, and accordingly lineages must be created and then lineages must die.
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For those interested in controlling their birth rate, the current mechanic is warmth...
(server code)(and it PEEVES me!)
At first I doubted you, but skimmed through the code and indeed you're right! I didn't know that! Is this documented on the wiki?
Which might mean just leaving it to our parenting skills.
Suggesting following mechanic:
First a rough, but better estimate, if baby death is due to bad mum or "runaway suicide baby" (not knowing of /die). Suggestion: If the baby dies under the age of 4 in a 10 radius for where it was last dropped (or birthed if never taken) it counts as bad mum. If the baby walks away more than 10 tiles from last drop it counts as runaway baby and shouldn't further penalize (the cool down applied already anyway).
Baby deaths due to runaway children shouldn't be considered.
Then the next baby/player should be priorized to the woman having had the least children yet... (not counting /die and runaway children).
For all potential mothers with the same count of children, heat distribution can apply.
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The base fluctuation is unavoidable, but it seems like the handling of it could be improved. Is there any good reason that the minority server HAS to be starved off artificially? Why not just let that line receive its fair probability of children and give all lines on all servers a fair chance of dying off?
As I see it there are pros and cons to this:
Pro:
*The overflow servers are no longer rapidly doomed once the overflow stops.
*Survival is based on skill and not number of players more of the time.
Neutral:
*Survival will still be sensitive to dilution caused by the number of fertile lines.
Con:
*Lower number servers will no longer be guaranteed to be the most active. Populations will be more diluted.
*You might need some way to keep manual connections on higher servers from stealing births. Make some servers manual only?
*Maybe server cost increases since players will not be as strictly compressed into fewer servers (Significant or not?)
My impression is that even if you give fair probability to all lines, servers will still die off when population drops, it will just be more manageable and fairly distributed. After all, a full server will automatically get more births due to having more women.
This thread includes Jason's comments about the algorithm, including a desire for most player to have the "full server experience" most of the time. You'll note that he actually essentially describes nocturnal infertility in this post: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … d=162#p162
So here's my idea:
1. New logins are born to a random mom on an existing server (ie a server is randomly picked, with the weighting depending on the number of potential mothers on each server). Maybe weight the births lightly toward lower numbered servers (when they are not capped), so that players tend to pool back into them, but established towns can still keep ahead of the curve for a while. But, I'm not sure this is even necessary.
2. When a server hits its soft-cap (100 in Jason's post above), then it overflows half of its logins to the other servers, repeating step one for those.
Last edited by Sylverone (2018-12-20 03:40:48)
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The base fluctuation is unavoidable, but it seems like the handling of it could be improved. Is there any good reason that the minority server HAS to be starved off artificially? Why not just let that line receive its fair probability of children and give all lines on all servers a fair chance of dying off?
Your analysis looks right to me.
I'd add another con could be that servers with populations under ~20 are more likely to give replayers lineage bans from all current lines, causing a few extra eve spawns overall.
Though I'm not sure what connection magic forces replayers to stay on their original server.
Morality is the interpretation of what is best for the well-being of humankind.
List of Guides | Resources per Food | Yum? | Temperature | Crafting Info: https://onetech.info
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I definitely think that if you have a baby girl and she /dies you should get a girl on your next child. I don't know. Call it destiny, instead of re-rolling the dice again.
Last edited by Mobitz (2018-12-21 00:18:14)
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I'd add another con could be that servers with populations under ~20 are more likely to give replayers lineage bans from all current lines, causing a few extra eve spawns overall.
Though I'm not sure what connection magic forces replayers to stay on their original server.
Is there such a thing? I'd been assuming that each "get reborn" button click triggers a new connection that goes through the reflector and is redirected as per the algorithm.
I mean, it wouldn't be that hard for Jason to have implemented "sticky" sessions, but I wouldn't have expected it.
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I'd gotten that notion reading the July 2017 thread, and the reflector code has comments for it.
[...]
I just realized that you can currently "game" the placement alg at the 50/50 stage by suiciding over and over until you finally land on the server that you want to play on.I can fix it by seeding the random number generator with your supplied email address. However, [...]
So, I guess I just need something that will work for the average player who knows nothing about this, to prevent repeat-suicide until you end up in the "old world," because if everyone is doing that, the load balancing essentially doesn't work.
[...]
Morality is the interpretation of what is best for the well-being of humankind.
List of Guides | Resources per Food | Yum? | Temperature | Crafting Info: https://onetech.info
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Ah! I'd read the post but not really paid attention to it. But yes, the code doesn't lie.
Based on your registration email, IF you get pushed down to one of the last two servers in the chain (i.e. if the upstream servers are full when you connect) THEN you will ALWAYS connect to the first of those last two servers or the last of those last two servers.
Of course, that post was from a different time, trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist any more, and not even really solving it (since as he noted, you can always manually choose which server to connect to). So if the load balancing algorithm were being tinkered with anyway so as to not intentionally starve specific servers of births, then the stickiness part of it could be changed as well (and might as well be).
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Yeah I remember hearing somewhere that once you were assigned a server it kept putting you on that server. I guess another effect of that could be more chance of running into your old line or being born into another family in that town. (A pro or con depending on your perspective and the design goals.)
I agree that it should probably bounce you through the servers each time, though that would make running a deliberate eve more tedious.
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