Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

ryanb · 2019-01-12 08:59:29

The latest update allows us to communicate over radio frequencies. The catch is it can only turn a light on and off. Morse code is a possibility, but I think lag and the difficulty in learning makes it impractical. We will need to get creative on how this is used.

A simple blink system could work. Two blinks mean one thing, three another, etc. This will be more useful to communicate with nearby villages where someone could write down what the blinks mean and deliver that to nearby villages.

Here is an example:

1 Blink: HELLO / OK
2 Blinks: NO MORE FEMALES
3 Blinks: NEED IRON
4 Blinks: NEED FOOD
5 Blinks: NEED FIGHTERS

You can start by trading a single blink to confirm someone is listening. Then after delivering the message they can respond with a single blink if they understand. This way they can deliver supplies, weapons, or females to repopulate.

Do you have any ideas of how to use this new tech?

lionon · 2019-01-12 09:21:07

This way they can deliver supplies, weapons, or females to repopulate.

Why should they, and how should they know where it comes from?

Do you have any ideas of how to use this new tech?

No.

Justduh · 2019-01-12 10:48:44

lionon wrote:

This way they can deliver supplies, weapons, or females to repopulate.
Why should they, and how should they know where it comes from?

That's my main problem with this whole thing, how is anyone supposed to tell where anyone is?

ryanb · 2019-01-12 16:08:33

Justduh wrote:

That's my main problem with this whole thing, how is anyone supposed to tell where anyone is?

This could be established by travelers who also communicate what the different blinks mean.

I saw on Twisted’s stream a paper saying “HUGE CITY 300 TILES EAST”. He traveled there and was able to start a family along with a few other travelers. This would be a good scenario for radio communication since they had no other way to communicate except traveling.

I still think the tech is mostly useless, but that will probably change as the tech expands.

I hope Jason also works on performance improvements to get a higher population on each server. This will increase the chance of multiple large towns staying alive.

Last edited by ryanb (2019-01-12 16:11:59)

Greep · 2019-01-12 16:34:00

Yeah I think it's mostly jumping the gun thinking of ideas here, I don't see anything happening this week at least. Most useful things require two towns getting both sets up, which is much harder than building a car, and both require multiple newcomen engine pats. The receiver even requires the drill. You'd get better results from going in a spiral search pattern with a car trying to find a town.

I think the most practical thing we'll see on the main servers, is making a light blink in town Already got cross town communication on mine tho :3

I don't think need iron/need food would help. Food can't be transported efficiently enough, and iron is likely to be pillaged in the radius of both towns if they're close enough. And if they're not close, they will probably have iron closer in their town radius.

We did think of one sign that would definitely be needed "LAG" XD

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 16:39:48)

CrazyEddie · 2019-01-12 16:37:02

Do you have any ideas of how to use this new tech?

SEND NUDES

Greep · 2019-01-12 16:42:58

..-------- = penis. Increasing dashes for penis game.

Edit: I've thought about it and there actually might be a use for radios: Making a town extension. It is not a practical one, since radios aren't worth the work involved, but it is a use.

We should also agree that we should only ever use high frequency (short antannae) until we get a signal from another town.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 17:22:08)

Dodge · 2019-01-12 18:09:18

The main interest i can see atm is to know if another town on the server is also advanced, since it doesnt require a timer (stones from bell tower need time to become stable) it can be done as quick as the people who do it can do it

But impossible to give indication on where the other village is since there is no point of refference

Maybe with one village having a bell tower the other ones can find out if they are close to each other but since the bell marker is not that precise (precision of 1000 tiles and under 1k it doesnt show distance) you could be way off in any direction

Also since we are spread out on 15 servers (4 active most of the time) there is most of the time only one big village per server maybe two on rare occasions

If we were all on one server and bell marker had a precision of 1 tile i could see how this could be usefull, for example you indicate your position 1276 tiles west from bell tower if another village is 1452 tiles west from bell tower then you could find the other village by looking at you position from the bell marker, a message a simple as ".---- ..--- --... -.... / .-- . ... -" could help village find each other

With the current mechanic i dont see it becoming more than a fancy light, i havent seen how it actually works yet but if it's only visual and you have to actually learn morse to type the message and to decode the messageit will be really hard to do something with it

But IF the bell marker has a one tile precision, and if either the eve spiral wouldnt go to infinite but come back and forth from the center to extremitiy and so on (or any other system that counter acts the fact that villages die out so quickly and there is usually only one big village per server rarely more are advanced to have this tech) or if we were all on one server

Then i could eventually see us learning the numbers and N,E,S,W letters to make something with it

Maybe some way to easily make messages and decode them wouldnt be too bad but idk, maybe we could write on a paper the message or harder the dots and dashes,

use it on the transmitter and if a blank paper is at the receiver then it writes the code on the receiving paper but that might feel cheaty if it's not an actual tech that does this,

although you could imagine that it's the person translating what is on the paper to morse code and then typing it on the transmitter, but for the receiving part having a paper writing itself without some tech behind it seems off (maybe the receiving part could be upgraded with something that makes dots and dashes on a paper).

Maybe only the transmitter could be done with a paper but the receiver would still need someone to actually translate the code until it gets upgraded or replaced with a receiver that makes dots and dashes on paper

Last edited by Dodge (2019-01-12 18:13:08)

Morti · 2019-01-13 20:10:12

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Greep · 2019-01-13 20:17:22

classy

lionon · 2019-01-13 20:28:17

The main issue I have with this update are the people that think they are oh so clever using a translation service.

If you don't actually learn morse code and read/write it yourself, let this nonsense be, please!

Morti · 2019-01-15 00:43:35

In real life you get, maybe, a billion seconds to do what you want, two billion more to do what you don't, if you're lucky.
In this game, you get three thousand six hundred.

3,600,000,000 vs 3,600

You live a million times longer in real life than you would in this game.

--

The ground work for radio communication was laid some 200 to 100 years ago, when the population of the planet was one billion people. Roughly a billion people lived and died in the lifetime prior to the first radio transmission. Maybe a million of them had any significant impact on it's development, not just through studies into physics, but in the lives of the people involved; giving them the desire to study the field and develop the technology. But let's just imagine that it was the whole that influenced them. The idea that that grand number may all benefit from this work.

How many people play this game? How many might benefit from such a technology, before that civilization is lost to spirals upon spirals? Maybe, a thousand tops, ten at any one time, a hundred over the course of families existence, a thousand overall families that will ever see the place.

1,000,000,000 vs 1,000

--

3,600,000,000 * 1,000,000,000 ... 9+9 orders of magnitude. 3.6*10^18. 3,600,000,000,000,000,000
vs
3,600 * 1,000. 6 orders of magnitude. 3.6*10^6. 3,600,000 seconds

They had all that time that we don't, in this game.

We don't have the time for Morse code in an hour, minus all the time we need just to stay alive.

--

This game does a fair job of condensing some aspects of humanities development down into experiencable forms; not just the technological ones, but the social ones. But of course, no game designer themselves can think of everything we've thought of over a hundred billion lives, over the last hundred thousand years.

Obviously I love what Jason is trying to do with this, but it's now up to us to condense this technology into some useful form, if we are to use it at all. Something, some, twelve orders of magnitude more convenient than it was to be 100 years ago.

I won't make any suggestions until I've played with it more, but to think we are going to use actual Morse code to communicate in this game, at this time, is a joke.

Actually, I take it back, I will propose some things. Obviously if two civilizations are going to communicate it's going to be about resources if it's going to be useful. We'd need things like shortcuts for introductions, a notation for a query and one for a reply. Using F for food, I for iron, W for water, these would be some shortcuts for resources.
Then a number of beeps to inform the other person of a quantity, maybe?
Or better yet, the person calling out just informs others that they are in need of something, and someone else responds that they either have a solution or not.

A sample message might go something like

Hello, this is X, anyone there?
Yes, this is Q, I'm here, what's up?
We're low on food.
We have 12 baskets of pies, I'll send 4 over via horse cart.
Thank you.

That should easily be broken down into as few signals as necessary to be conveyed.

A call out, an identification.
A receive, an identification.
Item needed, quantity.
Item sent, quantity.

Would that be necessary?

Is it worth the time?

Are people going to care enough for each other to do that, when life is so disposable, so recyclable, in this game?

I'd like to think so.

I will act, in game, as if it's so.

I play this so that you may live. So that you may play, with me and what I've made. I will do what I can to keep a child or parent civilization alive. I will do what I can, to keep you alive. (But learning from mistakes is also important; you will make them, we will make them, and we will learn.)

If a language is known and a form of communication is in place, it is, first and foremost, there to preserve our lives, and I will always use it as such if it means you and your civilization, live on.

PS Morse code was developed in 1836.

N -.
E .
V ...-
E .
R .-.
G --.
O ---
N -.
N -.
A .-
G --.
I ..
V ...-
E .
Y -.--
O ---
U ..-
U ..-
P .--.

lionon · 2019-01-15 07:55:31

The basic issue is still, there is no incentive for cooperation between civs/cities. Each can fully stand on their own and the birth game mechanics are actually made to be competitive instead of supportive. Why should city A send food to B? If they haven't enough they just were stupid.

The solution would be as has been suggested several times already from several persons, make biomes way bigger, balance the tech tree, that survival in each and every biome is a resonable option (albeit adapted differently) and have thus reasonable incentive of trading specialities between towns.

Back to telegraphy... even IRL these message have been always as short as possible. Instead of "Hey Darlying, my transport is delayed, so I'll be arriving instead on saturday. Love you", they were "COMING SATURDAY. STOP". As far I recall you even had to pay per word back then for a telegram or even per letter.

Kinrany · 2019-01-16 21:31:12

You could encode full messages, like in the first post in this thread, but encode them with a Morse-like binary format.

Simple blinks are not much more reliable than binary, you'll still have to repeat the message a few times to make sure the other side will understand.

There'll have to be some meta messages:
1. "I want to send a message"
2. "I'm listening"
3. "Starting a message"
4. "Ending a message"
5. "I got the message"

Some kind of hash sum would be nice too, but probably overly complex.

Meta messages can be pretty long, like eight bits, since you don't have to repeat them often.

mrslax · 2019-01-16 21:53:11

how about a mic and speaker?

jriver_13 · 2019-01-17 00:01:31

Your universal message code might work, but we need to incorporate activating the belltower in the city that needs the goods. Maybe activating the belltower is implied once someone's asking for it, but what if both cities need resources? Who has the rights to get the resources first? The contactor or the contacted?

Turnipseed · 2019-01-19 04:58:55

Morti you rick rolling bastard ♡

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-01-12 08:59:29

Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#2 2019-01-12 09:21:07

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#3 2019-01-12 10:48:44

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#4 2019-01-12 16:08:33

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#5 2019-01-12 16:34:00

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#6 2019-01-12 16:37:02

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#7 2019-01-12 16:42:58

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#8 2019-01-12 18:09:18

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#9 2019-01-13 20:10:12

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#10 2019-01-13 20:17:22

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#11 2019-01-13 20:28:17

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#12 2019-01-15 00:43:35

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#13 2019-01-15 07:55:31

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#14 2019-01-16 21:31:12

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#15 2019-01-16 21:53:11

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

#16 2019-01-17 00:01:31

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#17 2019-01-19 04:58:55

Re: Ideas for Radio Communication (Spoilers)

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