Why the complex recipe for lettering?

NoTruePunk · 2019-02-03 17:37:21

Hi,

I don't understand the reasoning for a complex letter crafting system. If I've got twigs and I've arranged them into a "lettering kit" through whatever prerequisite crafting, I should just be able to type what letter I want. That's why we have keyboards, to type letters... The complex crafting system for lettering is confusing and frustrating, which puts a hard learning curve on inter-generational knowledge. Lettering is much too easy to grief, even accidentally ("where did I get this M?").

I just want to make a sign that says "Carrots" or "Compost". This whole system should be scrapped for a sign recipe which prompts a text entry when placed. A village needs organizing tools in order to form a cohesive leadership, right now those tools just don't exist. The second you die everything you've worked on is gone, cannibalized into a half dozen side projects by people who knew nothing of the original intent of your work. The only way to prevent this is to spend 5-10 minutes to take up an apprentice, which there's no guarantee a child will accept.

~ntp

fragilityh14 · 2019-02-03 18:31:07

so are you the one who made the "writing center" sign in apocalypse town trying to get students?

NoTruePunk · 2019-02-03 23:06:24

fragilityh14 wrote:

so are you the one who made the "writing center" sign in apocalypse town trying to get students?

No

Léonard · 2019-02-04 01:03:47

I absolutely agree.
I did have this thought before too.
After seeing yet another new player making dumb and easy mistakes like killing the mouflon or shaving the last sheep.
Pulling carrots when there are no seeds, cutting the last wheat and using it to bake more pies when no seeds are left.
All this could be solved by a simple reminder.
"Always leave one sheep unshorn"
"Always leave one wheat/carrot for seeds"
With just a single sign.
But as it is right now the letters are needlessly frustrating and complicated.
AND they use resources as well (skewers).
Before anyone starts talking about notes, those do not compare at all.
You do not see their content unless they are picked up and even then you might not be able to read it entirely because of the speech limit (which is an extremely dumb downside if you ask me).

Go! Bwah! · 2019-02-04 07:42:23

Welcome to One Hour One Life!

Dodge · 2019-02-04 08:42:45

I like the letter system, when you make a sign you work for it, it's an achievement rewarded with an inscription that everyone can see and not a note that you have to pick up to read

Also you can make the letters one by one and hide them behind trees not that hard

I agree that having bulletin boards with notes that you have to click on to read would be nice, because usually the paper on the floor are most of the time random stuff and there is now way to tell if a paper is going to be important or useless before you pick it up

InSpace · 2019-02-04 09:48:05

I made this one when letters came, maybe it can be helpful

Léonard · 2019-02-04 13:01:36

Dodge wrote:

I like the letter system, when you make a sign you work for it, it's an achievement rewarded with an inscription that everyone can see and not a note that you have to pick up to read
Also you can make the letters one by one and hide them behind trees not that hard

Oh believe me I have used it before.
There is actually zero reward whatsoever.
People will 100% of the time make your work meaningless by changing around the letters and writing what they want instead.
It makes no sense.
As it is right now I consider signs as useful as rails. They are purely a novelty.
Whereas if they were made easily writable with some kind of ink that you later cannot erase (you'd have to replace the whole sign) then they would hold actual value.
They would be infinitely more useful than they are right now.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-04 17:25:26

Cross-posting my response:

You are making wooden letters by hand.

Have you ever done that in real life?

You don't just "type what you want the sign to say on a keyboard."

This game has a totally different aesthetic than any other crafting game. I hope you've noticed it, because it pervades every single thing you've ever done in the game.

I don't really know what to call it, because it's new, but it's something like a "maker aesthetic," as in, "What it actually feels like to make something."

What's the "recipe" for fire in Minecraft? Well, I don't recall a campfire as a basic item, so let's look at torch:

1 stick + 1 coal

What about Don't Starve?

2 logs + 3 straw

What about Rust?

100 wood

Do you see a pattern here?

Now, what's the "recipe" for fire in One Life? That's a rhetorical question, because obviously, there is no "recipe" in the standard crafting-game sense. Technically, the recipe is:

burning tinder + kindling

But "burning tinder" clearly isn't a base ingredient (like straw or wood), but instead a the end step of a multi-step process. Thus, making fire isn't a recipe. It's a process.

Next, notice that in these other games, the "recipes" are not very specific. 100 wood? How do you know that's going to make fire? How do you specify that 100 wood is going to make fire instead of a storage box or wood wall, or any of the other dozen things that you use wood to make in the game?

In Minecraft, there's a crafting grid, so you stick the items in a specific spacial arrangement to specify what you want to make. (For torch, the true recipe is 1 coal above 1 stick.) This feels a little bit like making something, since you are laying out the ingredients together "on a table" and then hooking them together.

In Don't Starve and Rust, you select what you want to craft from a menu, and the ingredients are automatically deducted from your inventory. This feels nothing like making something. Also, it obviously limits the scope of crafting, because it all needs to fit on a menu.

So Minecraft is more "maker-y", but also very arbitrary feeling. After "learning" a recipe, it's hard to remember. The wiki is absolutely essential for playing the game, even after you've already made everything once.

Furthermore, I think it also limits the scope of crafting somewhat, because there are only so many 3x3 patterns that make sense. 400 items, maybe, but we're already up to 1800 in OHOL, and we have a long way to go.

Have you ever made a fire on OHOL? Do you remember how to do it? Could you teach someone how to do it in the game?

If you remember how to make fire (and I hope that you do), it's because it involves a series of logically connected steps. In fact, these are EXACTLY the same steps you would use to make a fire in real life. If you were out in the woods in real life, you'd mostly know how to make fire (except for a few nuances of touch and technique).

And this is different from a recipe, even a cooking recipe, which is hard to remember. Is it 2.25 cups of flour, or 1.75? How much salt, exactly?

This is not so much a defense, as an explanation. I'm not saying that it's fun, or good, or anything like that. But this is what this game does. This is what it's all about. The theory is that is is fun and good, because you can actually learn and remember the crafting process, and actually teach it sensibly to other players in the game (aka, your children).

This is also the reason, by the way, that there's no inventory in the game. Stuff gets laid out on the ground as you work on it, just like real life, and the steps you take are fully visible to everyone around you (so your children, and others, can watch and learn, which is impossible in an other crafting game, where all the crafting happens on a menu screen that is invisible to other players),

And so, for the letters, the pattern of "maker aesthetic" continues. How would you actually make letters out of bits of wood? For an O or a U, you'd need to steam-bend the wood. For an A, you'd need three pieces of wood. You'd make a V and then add a cross-bar. And so on.

Also, for other reasons, I was very reluctant to add "easy signs" or "easy writing" to the game, because.... well.... have you seen Minecraft or Rust, with sign clutter on every available surface? The whole game turns into a bathroom wall. So, signs were going to be harder than "just typing," so that people would think carefully about what they wanted to say.

And the notes were added later, and they are easier, but they are also hidden from view until the reader picks them up, which means they don't contribute to sign clutter.

Jk Howling · 2019-02-04 19:08:39

Léonard wrote:

I absolutely agree.
I did have this thought before too.
After seeing yet another new player making dumb and easy mistakes like killing the mouflon or shaving the last sheep.
Pulling carrots when there are no seeds, cutting the last wheat and using it to bake more pies when no seeds are left.
All this could be solved by a simple reminder.
"Always leave one sheep unshorn"
"Always leave one wheat/carrot for seeds"
With just a single sign.
But as it is right now the letters are needlessly frustrating and complicated.
AND they use resources as well (skewers).
Before anyone starts talking about notes, those do not compare at all.
You do not see their content unless they are picked up and even then you might not be able to read it entirely because of the speech limit (which is an extremely dumb downside if you ask me).

Just a note, you can plant wheat seeds from a bowl of threshed wheat now. It's no longer the end of the world if someone happens to cut all the wheat down, though it's still preferable and a healthy practice to leave one for seeds, as not everyone is aware you can plant from threshed wheat, and simply pound it all to flour without realizing or planting more.

I so agree though, letters and signs as a whole are way too resource-heavy atm. Wish they weren't so. Atm you almost only see them as irrelevant decorations, usually depicting the town name, very rarely marking farm plots, and a bit more commonly with some sort of offensive slander or just nonsense from a griefer.

fragilityh14 · 2019-02-04 21:41:05

Just a note, you can plant wheat seeds from a bowl of threshed wheat now. It's no longer the end of the world if someone happens to cut all the wheat down, though it's still preferable and a healthy practice to leave one for seeds, as not everyone is aware you can plant from threshed wheat, and simply pound it all to flour without realizing or planting more.

oh, wow, thank you! i've for sure done some unnecessary running recently, which is especially annoying as wheat seeds despawn pretty fast

NoTruePunk · 2019-02-05 03:41:52

jasonrohrer wrote:

I don't really know what to call it, because it's new, but it's something like a "maker aesthetic," as in, "What it actually feels like to make something."

This all makes sense for the most part, thanks for the info. But in real life if I want to make something I generally have more than one way of going about it. I could very well take a bunch of twigs and twist and shape them to form letters, but if I were going to make a sign that's probably not how I would do it. If I really had nothing more than string, fire and ceramics then I may very well not have much choice I suppose. I could arrange rocks on the ground or try to scrape out letters from a piece of bark or something. I could crudely smear some dark substance on a flat surface...

The thing is, as it stands people just aren't utilizing these features. I think it's an issue of disproportionate abstraction: when making something certain acts are abstracted in the process, but almost nothing is abstracted in letter making. This results in tedium. When making a pickaxe we go from hot steel shovel head to hot steel pickaxe head in one blow. If the same level of abstraction used in letter making were applied to smithery I would probably need tongs and several blows on the horn of an anvil to make a pickaxe head, and I certainly wouldn't be able to make it starting with a shovel shaped lump of steel.

I hope we don't have to wait till we get to digital printer tech ingame to be able to make signs or lettering by keyboard. Maybe flat rock + twig letter + chisel = engraved stone sign? This would solve the issue of letters just falling off signs when you bump them (as it would IRL), but also requires the full twig alphabet be made initially if you want your village to be able to write anything. Chaining this tech makes sense and this is also how gravestones are made. A 12 character limit would prevent spam. A newcomen apparatus could be used in place of the chisel if the chisel is too low tech, or the board part of wooden signs could be made more primitive, either option would prevent the two techs from overlapping in utility. Also, twig lettering can be rearranged and re-purposed if the building or area is re-purposed, while an engraved stone could not.

have you seen Minecraft or Rust, with sign clutter on every available surface?

I have, and that definitely got out of control. At one point I had to answer questions through a plugin about the content of a sign wall in order to proceed in the server... To the next wall of signs. But players built that as a consequence of their collective actions. The players are going to find ways to ruin and adapt features through emergent gameplay no matter what, and after some point you can only do so much in getting them to play The Right Way™. If I want to subsist solely on wild gooseberries and set the world record for most bone needles crafted I could do that. I could create a meta that slowly kills off the rest of the playerbase, in both ingame and OOC. Unless you're making a game that is single player and PG-rated we will always be able to find a way to kill it. You gotta cut us loose and trust us to keep the community alive.

MultiLife · 2019-02-05 06:36:02

Never made a sign or wooden letters in real life (or in game) but I dare to assume that doesn't take 50 years like it does now in-game. Also having to use saplings, which are used to make home markers, arrows and tilled rows in a pinch, is making the process expensive and slow. Saplings are plentiful IRL and grow like weed, but in game, some bad rng and you will be walking to find them for a while. When you find one, you gotta get the three sapling cuts a basket can carry and then plant them and wait. I've never done signs in OHOL but I wish we could slap a note on a plank or a stick and use that to label farms and other areas. Sure they could be easily broken and then made again.
Or then letters/saplings/sticks could be acquired from other things.

Last edited by MultiLife (2019-02-05 06:37:44)

Kinrany · 2019-02-05 09:56:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

This is also the reason, by the way, that there's no inventory in the game. Stuff gets laid out on the ground as you work on it, just like real life, and the steps you take are fully visible to everyone around you (so your children, and others, can watch and learn, which is impossible in an other crafting game, where all the crafting happens on a menu screen that is invisible to other players)

Wow, makes sense.

Another option would be having recipes made of three parts, e. g. axe + log + deck = damaged_axe + log_half x2 + deck

Last edited by Kinrany (2019-02-05 09:56:24)

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-05 17:41:43

Well, a few more things about letters:

1. They last forever, and never decay, and can be reused. Once you have a "set" of letters, you can use them to spell all kinds of things.

2. Some letters are harder to make than others (aka, more valuable).

The (perhaps misguided) idea with all of this is to engender specialization and trade. It has never happened so far in the game, but I'm still hopeful. I was dreaming that there would be a letter-maker in town, who was selling letters. The more difficult letters would be more expensive. Or some traveling peddler from a different town with a cart full of rare letters.

If everyone could make signs by just typing, that would clearly never happen. Not that it's currently happening, but it would absolutely never happen.

Furthermore, when you see a sign in the game right now, it's really special.

In general, I want MOST things in the game to be "really special." Nothing should be plentiful or easy. If everything is easy, there is no meaning or legacy. Currently, a locked sign is a very meaningful accomplishment and a huge legacy to leave behind. When someone gives you a backpack in the game, it's a big deal. That is only true because backpacks are a major pain to make...

Also, if everything is easy, there are no difficult choices. If you have decided that making a sign is not worth the trouble, well, that's a choice. You've weighed the communication benefit against the cost of creation, and said "no." And "no" is a fine answer in this game.

Why is "yes" an inherently better answer?

Too much "yes," and the world is filled with garbage that no one cares about. (Visit the house of anyone who has had Amazon Prime for a few years, where saying "yes" has been made almost completely frictionless---it will likely be a category-1 hoard.)

Right now, if you see a sign in the game, you're seeing a very carefully considered "yes." The outcome of careful planning, dedication, and conviction.

Also, in terms of "trusting players," well... in this department, I do not trust humanity. I do have email, and have seen what happens with "sending a message to everyone" is frictionless. Here, a sign, or even more so, a locked sign, is a message made by ONE PERSON that dozens or even hundreds of people will eventually see and read.

Therefore, to keep it balanced, it seems that "making" the sign has to be at least 100x harder than "reading" the sign. Otherwise, you give one person too much power to burden others with their message.

That is why there is sign clutter in every game that allows cheap signs. Every person succumbs to the fallacy that their personal message is important enough for everyone else to read, and then adds another sign to the heap, and then is never held accountable for the cost, which is paid by everyone who walks by that sign in the future.

The reality is that NO ONE CARES about what is on your sign, or what you wanted to say. The last thing you want to do, when walking through a game, is read a bunch of signs. No one plays a game to read signs.

And I should ask you, given that you have what you want with notepapers, and you can type whatever messages you want with very low friction:

How often do you actually READ notepapers in the game?

I'll tell you that I see them around all the time, and maybe I'll pick one up sometimes, but I generally just ignore them.... I suspect that most people ignore them.

Have you ever had a friend who keeps emailing you, asking if you've read their blog yet?

Everyone wants to write a blog. No one wants to read a blog. Problem.

CrazyEddie · 2019-02-05 18:13:23

jasonrohrer wrote:

And I should ask you, given that you have what you want with notepapers, and you can type whatever messages you want with very low friction:
How often do you actually READ notepapers in the game?
I'll tell you that I see them around all the time, and maybe I'll pick one up sometimes, but I generally just ignore them.... I suspect that most people ignore them.

Yup.

After a bit of interest in seeing what others thought was so important to say that they committed it to paper and left it there for others to find... I quickly determined that none of them had anything to say that was of any interest to me.

Falsewall · 2019-02-06 01:57:17

Jason I wish you would give us the ability to stamp signs with wet dyed letters . Cuts down on letter spam, but makes signs typing not so frustrating.

jinbaili83 · 2019-02-06 13:13:20

When planes ware introduced i wondered if you can get to tutorial area to abuse its natural resources.
What rare items are worth this effort?
Gold has not many uses, town with airplane probably has bell tower already.
Iron veins are as rare as gold but give dozens of ore so iron it is not so rare.
Letters are probably only items worth such expedition, as it took me half of my life to make sign with just nine of them.

Booklat1 · 2019-02-06 14:44:44

CrazyEddie wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
And I should ask you, given that you have what you want with notepapers, and you can type whatever messages you want with very low friction:
How often do you actually READ notepapers in the game?
I'll tell you that I see them around all the time, and maybe I'll pick one up sometimes, but I generally just ignore them.... I suspect that most people ignore them.
Yup.
After a bit of interest in seeing what others thought was so important to say that they committed it to paper and left it there for others to find... I quickly determined that none of them had anything to say that was of any interest to me.

I was very skeptic of paper when it was introduced. I remained so for a very long time until I saw a library with a text mentioning an eve name I used. It was really a fun thing for me which makes me think already justifies the feature. However, paper isn't all that viable as a way to organize towns and signs are indeed to expensive.

I think what kills signs is the need for a freaking lock. Those are often seen as griefer tools, it's a bit hard to plant a ton of saplings, make letters and sign, get lock, all without being being stalled or killed. Maybe if more people were dedicated solely to planting saplings and other people to lettering?

crimeo · 2019-02-08 09:19:33

"You are making wooden letters by hand."

Only because the game forces me to do this very silly thing. If I were actually making a field expedient sign to tell passersby something in real life, with low tech, and a wooden board in my hand, I would SCRATCH letters into it like teenage lovers putting their initials on a tree. In like 30 seconds. Not steam and bend saplings into individual letters, lol.

If you want to project extreme power and wealth by making a super fancy sign like that, for your megacity, awesome. I like it as an option. In the meantime, 90% of signs would/should be simple carved/scratched letters to actually get things done and be practical.

Extremely avoidable common knowledge being unknown because somebody wasn't standing there THAT SECOND that an easy mistake is made shouldn't cause so much mayhem and frustration. It's not fun for either party, and having signs doesn't undermine the players teaching players philosophy anyway.

Last edited by crimeo (2019-02-08 09:21:48)

apereason · 2019-02-08 21:03:25

Léonard wrote:

Dodge wrote:
I like the letter system, when you make a sign you work for it, it's an achievement rewarded with an inscription that everyone can see and not a note that you have to pick up to read
Also you can make the letters one by one and hide them behind trees not that hard
Oh believe me I have used it before.
There is actually zero reward whatsoever.
People will 100% of the time make your work meaningless by changing around the letters and writing what they want instead.
It makes no sense.
As it is right now I consider signs as useful as rails. They are purely a novelty.
Whereas if they were made easily writable with some kind of ink that you later cannot erase (you'd have to replace the whole sign) then they would hold actual value.
They would be infinitely more useful than they are right now.

Locks. Every time i make a sign I make a lock! It really helps!

Booklat1 · 2019-02-08 21:19:45

crimeo wrote:

"You are making wooden letters by hand."
Only because the game forces me to do this very silly thing. If I were actually making a field expedient sign to tell passersby something in real life, with low tech, and a wooden board in my hand, I would SCRATCH letters into it like teenage lovers putting their initials on a tree. In like 30 seconds. Not steam and bend saplings into individual letters, lol.
If you want to project extreme power and wealth by making a super fancy sign like that, for your megacity, awesome. I like it as an option. In the meantime, 90% of signs would/should be simple carved/scratched letters to actually get things done and be practical.
Extremely avoidable common knowledge being unknown because somebody wasn't standing there THAT SECOND that an easy mistake is made shouldn't cause so much mayhem and frustration. It's not fun for either party, and having signs doesn't undermine the players teaching players philosophy anyway.

either this or people writing "penis" in every wall, every signpost.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-02-03 17:37:21

Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#2 2019-02-03 18:31:07

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#3 2019-02-03 23:06:24

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#4 2019-02-04 01:03:47

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#5 2019-02-04 07:42:23

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#6 2019-02-04 08:42:45

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#7 2019-02-04 09:48:05

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#8 2019-02-04 13:01:36

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#9 2019-02-04 17:25:26

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#10 2019-02-04 19:08:39

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#11 2019-02-04 21:41:05

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#12 2019-02-05 03:41:52

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#13 2019-02-05 06:36:02

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#14 2019-02-05 09:56:06

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#15 2019-02-05 17:41:43

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#16 2019-02-05 18:13:23

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#17 2019-02-06 01:57:17

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#18 2019-02-06 13:13:20

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#19 2019-02-06 14:44:44

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#20 2019-02-08 09:19:33

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#21 2019-02-08 21:03:25

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

#22 2019-02-08 21:19:45

Re: Why the complex recipe for lettering?

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