Update: Population Stabilization

jasonrohrer · 2019-01-04 22:46:59

This week's update focuses on a bunch of bug fixes and other little improvements. I took some time off for the holidays this week, and will be back with a substantial content update next week.

The biggest change is an improvement to the way that players are automatically distributed among the available servers. The original goal was to keep as many players as possible together on the same server, and only expand to additional servers when necessary during a population boom. During a population decline, we still want as many players as possible playing together, so the remaining players should be brought together onto one server, instead of being left spread out on the overflow servers.

This system was working as intended, but had some unfortunate side-effects on village fertility. Essentially, if you were on one of the overflow servers during a population downswing, your village was doomed, because no new players would be sent there. As player population changes throughout the day, this means that various villages die out again and again. And even worse, other logic in the player distribution code tries to make sure a given player always plays on the same server, whenever possible. So, depending on the time of the day that you play, and the luck of the draw, you might get stuck always being born on an overflow server right before a population downturn---always playing in a doomed village.

Take a look at the red line (server 4) in this graph, which was generated by Thundersen:

You can see that as the population rises, server 4 is brought into the mix to handle it, and then the population reaches a noisy plateau, which soon after results in server 4 being removed from the mix, only to be brought back into the mix a few hours later, only to be removed again shortly after. Villages on server4 were dying out over and over. Pity the players who were stuck playing on server 4 that evening.

Also, that system was designed a long time ago, when Eve distribution wasn't really in place, and I imagined players mostly all playing in the same area on the map. Now that players are playing in separate villages anyway, keeping them clumped on the same server together isn't as high of a priority.

CrazyEddie suggested that we try a different method, picking an appropriate number of servers for the load, and then just letting populations rise and fall on the servers together, as long as we're still above some lower threshold. Thus, once a server is brought into the mix, it generally stays in the mix. As population falls, it falls simultaneously on all servers, but no server is singled out to be childless. This means that a village being doomed by outside circumstances will happen way less often---almost never (except in very rare cases where the overall population falls to very low levels and a server really does need to be taken out of circulation).

Keep in mind that villages are still competing for babies, due to variable mother fertility factors (warmth and diet variety). So, that's still happening on each server. If your village is dying out, perhaps another village is stealing incoming players by taking better care of their fertile mothers. There is no explicit trans-server competition, though there's a kind of meta competition, based on how many of the players that are assigned to your server are motivated to keep playing across multiple lives.

I have something special in store for next week. Not magical, but still magic. Well, I guess it's only called "not magical" because of how jaded we are. If I told you that a few coils of copper wire and a galena crystal could be used to pull invisible voices from the sky, you'd probably think I was crazy. But to the untrained eye, a schematic can easily be mistaken for a sigil.

betame · 2019-01-04 23:27:58

An additional benefit is that unavoidable "nocturnal infertility" will be less harsh; servers will share that load equally.

Jason's also plowed through weeks worth of user-reported issues with this update.

Among those fixes, I want to share my favorite deliberate non-update from this week:

Last edited by betame (2019-01-04 23:32:26)

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-01-04 23:43:34

betame wrote:

https://i.imgur.com/60Hsprg.png

That is amazing. I love the Shrooms, they make this game go zero to a million real fast. Coming off a trip and thought everything was back to normal, I went to grab a berry and somehow grabbed the whole bush.. It ended up being a clay bowl.

Last edited by Grim_Arbiter (2019-01-05 00:51:39)

SirCaio · 2019-01-05 00:56:01

jasonrohrer wrote:

If I told you that a few coils of copper wire and a galena crystal could be used to pull invisible voices from the sky, you'd probably think I was crazy.

Radios sound really fun, but I'm still up for some "primitive" tech.

acidbase · 2019-01-05 06:26:00

as the submitter of this bug i accept this explanation.

Psykout · 2019-01-05 09:43:05

acidbase wrote:

as the submitter of this bug i accept this explanation.

After that response 99% its coded that way, 1% need to die of old age on shrooms to verify, 100% will be happy with pretty much all design choices Jason will make.

EDIT* https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1181

Definitely has to be coded that way as it has happened under the same conditions between many updates. Well played sir, well played.

Last edited by Psykout (2019-01-05 09:50:57)

lionon · 2019-01-05 09:58:10

jasonrohrer wrote:

Keep in mind that villages are still competing

Yeah, it's still awkward we're now in direct competition, while constantly changing teams...

Solution: I suggest changing servers on lineage ban, so when you change team, you're not directly competing with your previous team you just played...

Glassius · 2019-01-05 11:08:33

jasonrohrer wrote:

Keep in mind that villages are still competing for babies, due to variable mother fertility factors (warmth and diet variety).

Not true. I was spawning kids while without any attempts, even when entire village knew new kids are a bad idea right now.

It happened to me many times: a village has many fertile women, but a chain of farming->sheep pending->composting was broken, most often by the lacking smith. I choose to take a role of smith and assemble shovel, knife, axe and hoe as fast as I can. But suddenly a kid appears. Other women, farming with almost broken tools, denied to take care of it. So, the village usually dies.

I still think, the spawning of kids should be affected by the act of will, the best from both parents. I suggested hugging and kissing to start a reproduce counter during which a kid may be born. Without the "intercourse" attempt, only Adams and Eves would be spawning.

Also, if you want village to really compete between each other, spawning chance to the same family or village should be increased. Maybe give a people died from an old age a token, which will allow them to go back to chosen, still alive family line? Or the last home marker.

Last edited by Glassius (2019-01-05 12:21:15)

acidbase · 2019-01-05 11:48:41

i like that as a female you have little control over offspring production.
if you want to control the population you need to start killing babies, which starts drama - it's great.

Glassius · 2019-01-05 12:20:43

Killing babies is sick. Parentiing together is a real drama!

antking:]# · 2019-01-05 18:45:14

So lets go the giver rout!

we have one birth mother with a divers diet and good temperature to over ride the other mothers chance of children! then we take the birth mothers babies and sprinkle them to other mothers! the unwanted babies we give them to noobs and tell them to run out to the wilderness to start a new colony! If we do this regularly in of we kill four birds with one stone!
We get rid of the extra babies!

women can now work,, with out having to worry about babies, thanks to the birth mother!

we will get rid of noobs!

and we will train noobs to survive the wilderness and make a new village so they will slowly not become noobs!

I know that the giver had medicine that surprised emotion and color, and we can sort of simulate that! by not using the emotion tabs and making your screen black and white! to bad we don't those instakill shots because then noobs who don't know what they are doing will imitate the ignorant people of the giver!

Last edited by antking:]# (2019-01-05 18:58:46)

jriver_13 · 2019-01-06 00:49:45

Your comment has not gone unnoticed; it is very interesting.

Stormyzabeast · 2019-01-07 04:13:06

betame wrote:

An additional benefit is that unavoidable "nocturnal infertility" will be less harsh; servers will share that load equally.

Jason's also plowed through weeks worth of user-reported issues with this update.
Among those fixes, I want to share my favorite deliberate non-update from this week:
https://i.imgur.com/60Hsprg.png

That happened to me!! I had to restart the whole game lol. I took photos lol. Peoples smiles were dead lambs!!

apereason · 2019-01-08 04:45:36

Was the last girl in a village and I only had boys. our village died. What now?

Tarr · 2019-01-14 11:22:36

My biggest thing is do we really need five servers active with around pre-steam numbers? In the daytime I get having 5 servers of 40-50+ but in these early hours it's like 20-30 people per server.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-01-04 22:46:59

Update: Population Stabilization

#2 2019-01-04 23:27:58

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#3 2019-01-04 23:43:34

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#4 2019-01-05 00:56:01

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#5 2019-01-05 06:26:00

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#6 2019-01-05 09:43:05

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#7 2019-01-05 09:58:10

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#8 2019-01-05 11:08:33

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#9 2019-01-05 11:48:41

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#10 2019-01-05 12:20:43

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#11 2019-01-05 18:45:14

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#12 2019-01-06 00:49:45

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#13 2019-01-07 04:13:06

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#14 2019-01-08 04:45:36

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

#15 2019-01-14 11:22:36

Re: Update: Population Stabilization

Board footer