Update: Temperature Overhaul

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-20 17:21:26

Wondible:

What does "go directly to biome temp" mean, exactly?

Like, when you step into a biome, there's an instant jump to that temp?

That's pretty much exactly what the thermal shock is (you jump directly to the desert temp when you step into the desert, no tweening). However, this is modulated by these other factors:

1. If you're wearing clothes, the amount jumped is reduced. So if 10 is perfect, and the desert should take you all the way to 20, and you're wearing clothing that insulate you 50%, then you will only go up to 15. This makes clothes valuable when traveling. After you're there for a while, your temp will gradually rise the rest of the way between 15 and 20. But that will take a while, because the clothing slows down this process.

2. If you cross from a cold biome to a colder one, there is no sudden jump, just a gradual one. Same for when crossing from a hot biome to a hotter one. Or when crossing between biomes that are the same. The "shock" only happens when crossing to the other side of the temperature meter.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-20 17:45:22

Finally, what about the fact that clothing always slows your temperature change?

The benefit here is that if you warm up to just right at home, and then go on a journey, your "good" temp will be maintained by the clothing as you travel around to places that have no fire or buildings.

Now, once you've been out for a while, and you're cold, and you come home again to warm up, the clothing will also slow down this warming process.

First of all, why? And does this make any sense?

Well.... yes, this is true to life. If you have hypothermia, you get naked in a sleeping bag with another person, you don't jump in there with your parka on. If you're very cold, and approach a fire, you open up your coat to warm up faster. You take off your mittens to warm your bare hands by the fire.

Furthermore, clothing is used to protect you, temporarily, from man-made heat. Oven mitts. Thick chefs pants and double-breasted coats. Fire fighting gear.

So, there can also be places that are too hot in the game for man-made reasons, and clothing will let you go in there for a while without overheating. For example, if the forge was way hotter than it currently is, you might walk away to cool off, then pile on clothing to brave those high temps for a smithing session.

So yes, this is true to life, and we can at least imagine some in-game situations where it would come into play.

However, this also, usually, makes clothing worse when you're actually trying to warm up, and encourages people to strip down near the fire to warm up faster, which is a bit tedious. Maybe the simulation is too detailed here.

Another possibility is that clothing could only slow down your temp as it moves away from perfect (either hot or cold).

So you warm up by the fire, and go on a polar journey, and your clothing slows down how fast you get cold. But if you return home, and warm up by the fire again, the clothing does not slow down how fast you warm up (it happens at the same speed as if you were naked), because you are moving from cold to perfect.

The only reason that I'm hesitant to do this is that it will eliminate some more advanced temperature play, where you intentionally "overheat" a bit before going on a long polar trip. So if 10 is perfect, lets say you take yourself up to 13 before heading into the snow. Perhaps that will give you a few extra minutes of working time in the snow before you hit your min temp out there, and perhaps the math works out to make this superior in terms of food usage. (By starting at 13, you end up spending more of your journey closer to perfect, so you burn less food, than if you started at 10 and went down from there.)

Now, if clothing only slows you down as you move away from perfect, this won't work. You'll warm up to 13, and then head to the snow, but your move from 13 down to 10 will be fast, because you're moving toward perfect (10).

All that said, if you really want to warm up faster by the fire, a complete strip down isn't necessary. Usually taking off your hat or your coat is sufficient to achieve a noticeable speed-up. And I don't think that's too bad, or too tedious. After a long, cold journey, you return home and take off your hat by the fire?

In general, it seems good to give players more control over these things, not less. Then they can tell the game what their intention is, based on what they do. "I want to warm up faster right now" when they take off their hat by the fire, vs., "I want to stay cool as long as possible" when they leave their hat on as they approach the super-hot forge.

Yes. this might be harder for new players to learn, but the possibility of micro-managing temp like this isn't something that they need to worry about at first anyway. But there's some extra depth there for the players that want to explore it.

Peremptive · 2019-02-20 18:09:58

I like how the warm terrains work now. Desert being equivalent to snow seems reasonable. Being in the jungle in v201 actually is like the "neutral" terrains naked, so staying there for extensive time is viable. So now it is true that the main difference from before is that you have to work for it if you want good temp, you can't simply use biomes. This does make the game more difficult, and changes settling locations and priorities, but with people who actually have a bit of experience it is certainly doable.

The main remaining issue is that the learning curve is quite sharp now. Friends who I introduced to the game complained you had to eat all the time before when we left the city centre, now you need to eat even more often and most wild sources are depleted. The only reasonable thing to do as a baby is to stay still for 5-6 minutes, and spend the next 5 or 10 depending on the situation getting clothes for yourself, if you are not lucky. Many people just won't realize that and parenting is less common than before.
Hopefully players will figure out layouts that let newer players survive for longer, and actually progress in the game.

Last edited by Peremptive (2019-02-20 18:13:48)

Redram · 2019-02-20 19:25:37

jasonrohrer wrote:

The fact that people weren't wearing clothes or building buildings was something that needed fixing.

The interesting thing here is that if this is in fact your goal - fixing the fact that nobody was wearing clothes, or building buildings - did you ever once consider using factors other than temperature to encourage these things? Because you did not say "temperature was something that needed fixing". I think the problem is you're trying to use temperature as a broad cudgel to get people to do all these things that you want them to do, when there's other, better ways that don't create an early game that is a steep cliff to new players.

Clothing could extend the time before a player dies from wounds, or even have a chance to negate something like a snake bite (rabbit boots 10% chance, fruit boots 30% chance, etc). Buildings could protect advanced equipment from the elements. This stuff has all been suggested before though, so I won't go into detail. But I think you need to widen your tunnel vision with regards to clothes and buildings Jason. It's what's forcing you to create all these weird conditions and rules that are counterintuitive and not fun. You're using a giant cudgel when you could be using a carrot and a smaller cudgel.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-20 21:13:27

The idea is to keep the number of core systems in the game extremely limited, and to build as much as possible using just those systems.

Right now, there are two core systems:

1. Food

2. Temperature.

Both systems are clearly displayed in the game UI. They are also explained in the tutorial.

As a solution for mono diets, the YUM/MEH thing was added, further complicating (1). This needs to be displayed in the UI. It needs to be explained in the tutorial. But, aside from the messaging issues, there were no additional authoring issues. The foods themselves didn't change. I didn't need to go back through the 50 existing foods in the game and modify them all, or add a new parameter to them all.

If you were to pick up shoes that reduced your snake bite chance by 10%, how would you realize that this was the case? Where would this information be displayed? And this adds an additional authoring burden as well. When making new clothes, where are these extra properties specified? Do I need to go back through all existing clothes and add these properties to them?

If buildings protected advanced equipment.... through what mechanism? How would this be simulated? How would this be messaged to the player? How would I author this, when adding new "advanced equipment," to specify this relationship with certain walls?

Here's the reality: this is one of the most complicated games ever made, and definitely the most complicated game ever made by a single person. The key to making it work, for both myself as the creator, and for the players, is to keep the core systems simple, and avoid the temptation to add new core systems all the time.

So, yes, I want to make temperature go as far as it can go, before I consider adding additional systems to the game.

And in terms of my vision for the game, or why players would use buildings or clothing---this isn't Minecraft Creative Mode, folks. I'm not trying to make a game where you build stuff "just for fun" or "because it looks cool." I'm trying to make a game where you build stuff because you have to---because your survival depends on it, and because it's optimal. The walls in this game have always had R-values. There has always been a thermal propagation model (it was one of the first things that I coded on the server, four years ago). Walls were supposed to be functional. That's why you'd want to build them.

InSpace · 2019-02-20 21:29:29

Isn't it 3 core systems?

Food, temperature and age?

Peremptive · 2019-02-20 21:58:04

jasonrohrer wrote:

If buildings protected advanced equipment.... through what mechanism? How would this be simulated? How would this be messaged to the player? How would I author this, when adding new "advanced equipment," to specify this relationship with certain walls?

Assuming it wouldn't add too much overhead, you could make decaying items that are inside stop decaying. As soon as you dropped an item that would have this behaviour, such as a cart, if when you drop them they are on an insulated tile, then check if all 3x3 tiles around it are insulated, and use that to count it as being inside. The counter will just be stopped, not reset, so a cart will still break while you use it or leave it exposed outside, but not while you have it stored in the tool shack. The smithy/bakery would also more safely fill up boxes with baskets of stuff, helping with storage. And you could over-hunt rabbits for a while, convert the space-consuming furs to clothes and store them until someone needs them.

The concept of decay is not in the tutorial yet. It could be introduced at the same point where using houses and fires is introduced. You could hve a regular basket inside, a decayed one outside, something like that.

Last edited by Peremptive (2019-02-20 21:59:58)

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-02-20 22:15:19

jasonrohrer wrote:

And in terms of my vision for the game, or why players would use buildings or clothing---this isn't Minecraft Creative Mode, folks. I'm not trying to make a game where you build stuff "just for fun" or "because it looks cool." I'm trying to make a game where you build stuff because you have to---because your survival depends on it, and because it's optimal. The walls in this game have always had R-values. There has always been a thermal propagation model (it was one of the first things that I coded on the server, four years ago). Walls were supposed to be functional. That's why you'd want to build them.

You can still build efficiently for your survival and have a little zazz in there Every creation does bear a creator's mark in some way.

I would like to know why you think we weren't building enough before though?

I used to make them all the time

I can even find examples on the fourm where people built massive temples on desert, where they never should have been, and were dubbed noob cookers.

Most players learn small and do tend to build horribly at first. I think your common player would be able to build a tiny house if needed, but with greater builds like sheep pens or a mosquito trap they're not going to know how to tackle the job.

Last edited by Grim_Arbiter (2019-02-20 22:16:00)

Spoonwood · 2019-02-20 22:23:02

jasonrohrer wrote:

Over the past few weeks, my mission has been to fix stuff that needs fixing. The fact that people weren't wearing clothes or building buildings was something that needed fixing.

Sounds to me that you just couldn't stand people being naked or not building buildings and insisted that they start playing other ways. Sounds pretty controlling to me. Simply put no one plays a game in the place of someone else playing. No one makes another player's moves for them. At least not you don't control our mouse clicks and player's movements and choices. Each individual gets to choose how he or she plays. Also, and perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I'm pretty sure that people can still play on a lower population server without wearing clothes or making buildings and live to 60. Also, probably on the main server also. Buildings and walls are still not necessary. How could they? Lack of buildings or walls is not a cause of death.

jasonrhorer wrote:

If you're wearing clothes, the amount jumped is reduced. So if 10 is perfect, and the desert should take you all the way to 20, and you're wearing clothing that insulate you 50%, then you will only go up to 15. This makes clothes valuable when traveling.

Provided you don't get bite by mosquitoes, which could be out of the jungle also, or maybe the closest food source was bananas in a jungle and then you stopped to eat a banana and got bite. Clothes aren't so valuable then. 1 pip left before you can eat makes clothes when traveling still questionable. People often went naked, sometimes even while at home in a desert, because of the mosquitoes before.

jasonrhorer wrote:

After a long, cold journey, you return home and take off your hat by the fire?

Wait... the fire is running when you get back home? You said it was a long journey, right? So how in the world can you know that a fire is running when you get back home?

jasonrhorer wrote:

If you were to pick up shoes that reduced your snake bite chance by 10%, how would you realize that this was the case? Where would this information be displayed? And this adds an additional authoring burden as well. When making new clothes, where are these extra properties specified? Do I need to go back through all existing clothes and add these properties to them?

Someone would figure it out, tell someone else, and then it would get added to the wiki or to onetech. Honestly, if there were no explanations, I wouldn't consider that much of a problem for new objects *for a bit*, as I don't see how that would pose a problem. Again, at least not *for a bit*. Anything new without an explanation could get regarded as an Easter Egg at this point in time I think. I mean, as you may know, some 15-year kid found the Easter Egg in Adventure when the game's designer Warren Robinett supposedly didn't tell a single person about it. So, I think someone could figure it out.

jasonrhorer wrote:

Here's the reality: this is one of the most complicated games ever made, and definitely the most complicated game ever made by a single person.

I think the latter claim especially a pretty big claim for anyone to make at this point in time.

jasonrhorer wrote:

I'm trying to make a game where you build stuff because you have to---because your survival depends on it, and because it's optimal.

But optimal for doing what? Building walls isn't optimal if you have goals that don't include building walls or fences. Heck, even if you want to build animal pens, you don't need walls or fences. Trees and berry bushes can suffice (and I like the idea of tree based animal pens! has this update resulted in more trees getting cut? If so, I don't like the sound of that.). A player's survival also doesn't depend on building a single thing before 60. A player's survival just depends on avoiding predators, any person trying to kill you, and getting enough pips filled. Walls? Who is building them in Eve camps? Floors? Is anyone building them in Eve camps? No one dies because walls or floors weren't built. People die from starvation (yellow fever can result in starvation, so I include yellow fever in starvation), murder, deadly animals, or sudden infant death. And in the end there is no survival, by design.

Peremptive · 2019-02-20 22:37:48

well buildings before were not important to survival and were done as side projects to learn that part of the game. I remember only in one very large town that people were spreading out in the grasslands and actually built 2-3 houses in the outskirts. There were lots of griefers and houses were a way to protect yourself and store weapons.

But most people definitely did not see any buildings before the update. The main issue is not that buildings were made more important, that is reasonable. The problem is that grassland settlements failed before, and the changes don't make them that much more likely to become sustainable. The old meta was nerfed to oblivion while the new meta was hardly buffed. Success is expected to come entirely from players getting better at building fast and using space efficiently, but in a town I just played people were dying because of the clutter indoors not letting them pick up food, and their skeletons littered with 3-4 clothes made it almost impossible to clear up. People will die and settlements will fail from the dumbest things.

Last edited by Peremptive (2019-02-20 22:40:58)

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-20 23:20:09

Spoonwood, the scolding tone is causing me to skip reading your post, as a reflex. I've been working myself to death to make this game as good as it can be, just so you know.

From the original trailer, showing how I wanted heat conservation inside buildings to work:

Old man shuts door. Damn kids...

Now, as far as the green biomes being too hard, as you observed, they are no harder than they used to be. But the old desert crutch is gone.

It's interesting to think about the days before the desert existed.... an entire month of no crutch. Everyone was brand new back then, not sure how they survived.

Also, body heat and clothing in the new update is way more effective than it used to be. It takes you well up above 50% of the way to perfect, having a full outfit, in the green biome.

It is not hard, at all, for me to raise the bottom up. MinFoodDecrement is currently 2 seconds, and Max is 20 seconds (the max is added to the min, so perfect temp is like 22 seconds per food block). I could raise the min, and that will make the whole game easier. I could also lower the max, to keep the upper end the same (like 4 and 18, so the perfect temp will be 22 seconds per block).

But this makes clothing and buildings matter less.

I'm not convinced that I SHOULD do this. I mean, people always complain when something changes, and tell me that the sky is falling. Where's the evidence? I guess I need to look at player life expectancy data....

CrazyEddie · 2019-02-21 00:10:58

You could also tweak the biome temperatures, making grass/swamp/plains/rock a little warmer and jungle a little cooler. You could increase the hidden food bonus. There's plenty of little knobs you could nudge here or there. But as you say... should you?

Nerfing desert was good because it eliminated the monobiome meta and made clothing important. The nerf also removed a crutch... but the crutch wasn't necessarily bad and perhaps shouldn't have been removed without some further compensation.

The game difficulty was at a pretty good place with the easy-living desert. Early game was hard for newbies, late game was comfortable for newbies as long as there were a few pros to carry them. The pressure was low enough that players had opportunities to roleplay and to explore the tech tree. That's not the case now. The pressure is high. Newbies have a hard time surviving, and everyone has a hard time doing anything other than focusing on survival.

Is that the pressure level you want? Maybe. But the increased pressure has changed the game's aesthetic, and I don't know if you'll be able to appraise the change adequately by only looking at data. There's a subjective quality that you'll need to experience, and you'll need to hear other people's experiences of it as well.

Last edited by CrazyEddie (2019-02-21 00:12:13)

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-21 00:28:16

Well, here's the data. The average life expectancy from bigserver2 over time, grouped by age of death (child life expectancy, overall life expectancy, and those-who-make-it-past-childhood life expectancy):

So indeed, there was a dip after the update (which shipped on February 15). It's not huge, and it can probably be explained by people just not understanding the new system yet.

When I played a few days ago, I saw lots of people trying to stand on the desert as a baby, and not standing near the fire. As their mother, I had to explain it to them.

I'm still not sure what to do here....

I really like the way the Eve game feels right now. It should be, absolutely, right on the knife edge of failure. You get farming going right as the last wild food is eaten. You barely make it. You fail a lot. Half your babies die.

Whenever I've tested the Eve game over the past year, it has felt right to me. But even in more recent testing, I was NOT exploiting the Desert crutch myself. I guess I was a "stupid Eve" in that way.... So anyway, I'm not sure how it felt, the way the "good" players were playing Eve (look for desert near swamp).

That makes me extremely hesitant to "bring the bottom up..." because I don't want to ruin that frantic feeling. That very intentional, frantic feeling, when you are naked in the wilderness.

Another option is to "bring the top up," or increase the bonuses that are possible for those who achieve perfect temp through clothing and walls and fire. But even the "top" here is relative, because an Eve standing next to a fire will be "at the top". Still, without clothes, she won't be at the top for long.

On the other hand.... I don't want advanced civ folks to go too long without eating....

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-21 00:29:15

Also, imagine if I hadn't changed clothing/buildings at all, and had just removed desert and jungle from the game as the only change....

What would have happened then?

fragilityh14 · 2019-02-21 02:29:56

jasonrohrer wrote:

Whenever I've tested the Eve game over the past year, it has felt right to me. But even in more recent testing, I was NOT exploiting the Desert crutch myself. I guess I was a "stupid Eve" in that way.... So anyway, I'm not sure how it felt, the way the "good" players were playing Eve (look for desert near swamp).

Granted, i was gone from the end of June to January (I don't play games much in my busy work season, but then kept getting into other games before I got back, but hey, i can finally do complex train layouts on Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe now), but I was just the same way. It was only when i posted a "What do babies want from me thread" a few weeks ago i found out experienced players wouldn't stay in any camp that wasn't desert.

For all the people who said villages weren't sustainable: the longest line after the update was longer than the longest one the week before.

But most importantly Jason, since the update, and people getting used to the update, my moms now set me in nursery rooms with fires. The buildings are actually used for a purpose now. People were so upset like, "I'm gonna starve to death being a blacksmith". Forges should be inside. Bakeries should be inside. Nurseries should be inside.

This is all working as you intended, and it is beautiful and brilliant. most people's complaints are that surviving actually takes work.

In a thread, I had commented that my wife who hasn't played this game since March or April commented, "it's a survival game, it isn't The Sims", someone responded, "Sims means simulation, this is listed on Steam as a simulation!"

Obviously I meant the game "The Sims", which simulates living in the suburbs. This game simulates surviving in the wilderness after an apocalypse starting with nothing.

However, I still really want full body robes, we do totally need a clothing update.

Thank you SO MUCH for fixing the hugely unbalanced aspect of the game, obviously clothes should be an advantage, not disadvantage. People are pissed about how cold the grasslands are, but I live in a grassland and I'm inside with a fire still wearing a long sleeve flannel under a carhart.

Also please give us kerosene stoves though You made kerosene, we shouldn't be fully relying on wood for heat

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-02-21 02:32:19

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, imagine if I hadn't changed clothing/buildings at all, and had just removed desert and jungle from the game as the only change....
What would have happened then?

I wouldn't have fruit boots or a cactus god to make offerings to!

The fixes today were good though, and I'm confident we ARE adjusting our playstyle accordingly.. It just takes time to adjust and figure out the new norm.

If deserts were eliminated it would be a step back for not only food and temp, but obviously tech. You could almost make a better point that if you removed the snow biome there would be less of an impact on the game right now. I know that there could be some cool stuff that the arctic could bring in the future so obviously I dont want that.

I do feel like the arctic could offer some other food other than a ice holed fish right now though. If there was another wild food in the extreme cold, it might be a good balance for survival. A one time use resource like bananas. Maybe like some kind of nut that needs a sharp stone to get.

Show the nuts some love! They are a great foraging food in life.

Peremptive · 2019-02-21 02:38:26

jungle and desert, for anyone not using pre update settlements, are now avoided. With the recent fix, and with some clothes, you just run over them on your way to grass/savanna/mountains typically without significant penalty. So it is almost as if you removed them, except you can prop up a village for a bit if you bring some banana baskets, while berries disappear and other food is more difficult to find that concentrated.

You mentioned yourself, that you have added hundreds of items since before the warm biomes. I haven't been playing that long, but from reading here, many of the changes and additions were upgrades, that nerfed their previous stages to make them more worth it, like water. Farming was also changed to a composting model which needs more work and soil than before. So while a lot more is possible now compared to back then, every stage requires more resources and experience to accomplish. Doing all those things was only possible because you didn't need that much food, due to good temps. So people only really foraged to look for iron as soon as a city was established, and you could get crops one time and keep them going. Post update, all the extra resource and food pressure compounds with how you have much less time to do any work. Before good players could start improving a city at 3 or 4. Now players have to be afk by the fire for the first 5-6 minutes of life or risk very likely death, then have to spend the next 10 making clothes, and might as well be dead in the last 5. So you have about 40 minutes, during which you need to eat and take breaks much more often, to do more work than before.

Upgrading and the more developed systems you added were great when older players were able to improve the towns, and noobs could be completely wasteful for a couple of weeks until they learned the ropes. I remember spending a few lives just figuring out how to tend the berries in my first days. I remember trying to get water from a well, not realizing it was dry. Trying to water crops with salt water some griefer probably left near the farm, because I wasn't mousing over items. I was learning rules like never shear the last sheep but I didn't understand why. However, I had the chance to find a good temp tile which was easy enough and observe others working and learn that way. Or I could ask someone to teach me and we were in good enough temp that there was time to talk between one of us needing to look for food. Now you are forced to be cold when learning, you can't go inside by the fire, you have to be in the farm or wherever the work is being done.

All the extra resource pressure means you now need to forage for wheat even with a town set up . The huge berry farms suck up all soil, making other cultivation difficult. We need to place things close by and efficiently more than ever, but I keep seeing wheat and carrots planted on their own somewhere off to the side, because if you plant them in common view they will be gone really fast. Towns keep getting propped up with wild resources until they run out and collapse. Soil and the items needed for compost seem to be struggling the most.

Last edited by Peremptive (2019-02-21 02:44:37)

Spoonwood · 2019-02-21 04:37:32

jasonrohrer wrote:

Spoonwood, the scolding tone is causing me to skip reading your post, as a reflex. I've been working myself to death to make this game as good as it can be, just so you know.

No, I don't know that you're dying from working on this game. And I seriously doubt that you know that also. You have used emotive language. I guess you're just feeling stressed out right now and trying to say that. Though maybe that's not it.

jasonrohrer wrote:

From the original trailer, showing how I wanted heat conservation inside buildings to work
From the original trailer, showing how I wanted heat conservation inside buildings to work:
https://media.giphy.com/media/XIhnYwjzP … /giphy.gif
Old man shuts door. Damn kids...

Heat conservation via a fire inside of the oven? An old man cooking a single pie complaining about the children? I certainly won't be trusting that guy talking about the children.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Now, as far as the green biomes being too hard, as you observed, they are no harder than they used to be.

What a strange thing to say. Jungles are green biomes. Jungles are harder than before. The only other green biome is grassland. All other biomes have different colors. So by even talking about "green biomes", I don't follow. I don't think you have talked about what I said here.

jasonrhorer wrote:

It's interesting to think about the days before the desert existed.... an entire month of no crutch. Everyone was brand new back then, not sure how they survived.

What were family populations like back then? As I've said elsewhere, the game is easier with fewer people as a tendency for families trying to build and maintain a settlement. I don't have data. But, the game is now in post steam release phase. Are you saying that your game has similarly numbers of people playing it as it did during the first month of release? Or does the game now have less people playing it? If the game had fewer people back then playing it than it does now in a settlement, I don't think talking about the old days like that makes any sort of sense.

jasonrhorer wrote:

Also, body heat and clothing in the new update is way more effective than it used to be. It takes you well up above 50% of the way to perfect, having a full outfit, in the green biome.

That is also vague. I also would disagree with the 'way more effective' characterization. Furthermore, what is the clothing set? If your only clothing is an old boot or sealskin, you won't end up 50% above of the way to perfect. I'm not so sure that what you've described comes as the average clothing set now by any means. And what is the cost of the clothing and *how many people* can reasonably get a clothing set up that takes you well up above 50% in comparison to the resources around?

jasonrhorer wrote:

I guess I need to look at player life expectancy data

In addition to /die for babies in anyone's arms, I think, shift + delete is instant death at any age with the Awbz mod. So, those would both have to remain constant over time and people would also have to be trying to live as long as possible at the same rate.

CrazyEddie wrote:

Nerfing desert was good because it eliminated the monobiome meta and made clothing important.

But it wasn't a monobiome meta. The meta wasn't deserts either. The meta was some balanced temperature, clay sources, soil sources, branch sources, milkweed sources, basket sources, water sources, and some wild food sources also. Trying to maximize balance heat spots could work well also, though the more you tried to do that, the more potential dangers existed (a bigger desert abutting a neutral biome would mean more snakes, a jungle would mean mosquitoes, except for occasional jungle patches without them). So, just from the heat part, that means a desert intersecting a neutral biome or a jungle. Since you wanted soil and branches, and clay and basket sources that meant desert intersecting swamp or desert intersecting grassland, if going with deserts over jungles. Jungles were rarer, because handling mosquitoes was and still is more difficult than killing snakes, even though jungles had more natural food sources. Jungles had more foods, but deserts have easy flat rocks, so for an Eve wanting to smith, desert would make for a more appealing choice. The edges of jungles also weren't as close to the middle temperature wise as the edges of deserts and a swamp or a grassland, so setting up in a jungle would mean more of a trek for supplies than setting up on an desert edge. The desert choice really could get described as desert intersecting swamp, and hopefully grassland wasn't too far away, or desert intersecting swamp intersecting grassland. Also, find a desert patch near a swamp, and you could easily have some nice heat spots for the farmers. Have a decent Eve or child of an Eve and the primary kiln also would get put in a balanced temperature spot. That was also only for people choosing to go with natural heat sources instead of technologically based heat.

What's changed? Since there's no balanced temperature spots anymore, and there's not any to cool off equivalent to how clothing heats you up, clothing has become more important and food has become more important. So, basically the meta for an ideal spot changed from desert or jungle intersecting swamp intersecting grassland (then) to (now) swamp intersecting grassland intersecting prairie, for the rabbits for clothes and the lovely prairie food sources since people need to eat more. At least that's what I would guess comes as the intersection, though maybe there's a fair amount of badlands nearby also or people are hoping nearby jungles will sustain their families for long enough. Heat is now technologically based instead of naturally based. Put the baby over fire or hot coals or a hot flat rock. So, both metas care about heat, and have grassland and swamp as two of their main biome choices. What has changed? Instead of having a third biome choice as deserts OR jungles, the third biome choice is prairies for rabbits and nice crop types. At least that's my guess. Thus, the new system I would expect has reduced the third biome choice from jungles or deserts (picked for heat) to prairies (picked for heat and food). Though, maybe people choose to set up near badlands more, but I doubt it, because even though mouflon hide and wolf hats are nice clothes, and iron is nice, prairies get you more food and more clothing potential.

Spoonwood · 2019-02-21 04:39:17

jasonrhorer wrote:

It is not hard, at all, for me to raise the bottom up. MinFoodDecrement is currently 2 seconds, and Max is 20 seconds (the max is added to the min, so perfect temp is like 22 seconds per food block). I could raise the min, and that will make the whole game easier. I could also lower the max, to keep the upper end the same (like 4 and 18, so the perfect temp will be 22 seconds per block).
But this makes clothing and buildings matter less.

Lowering the min or max might be a good idea, I don't know.

Since you want more clothing and buildings though, most clothing could possibly require a milkweed stalk instead of thread. Or clothing sources could become more abundant.

The problem with buildings though at present I think lies in that it doesn't make each job equally appealing in the long run. Before, the old system could make each station at home equally appealing in terms or temperature in principle. I don't see that happening now. Smithing and cooking can get done inside with everything with flooring. Farming can't have all tiles floored, so I don't see how buildings help. Someone suggested that tress modulate temperature on reddit as an improvement, and I like that one. Here's another one. Water can cool things off or heat things up. So, perhaps, a watered crop can cool things off in a hot biome, and increase the temperature in a warm biome. Buildings would still matter, because cooking or smithing too close to the farm causes space issues. Perhaps even better, cisterns with water in them could incline temperature towards the middle, cooling or warming the local area depending on whether the biome was hot or cold. The fuller the cistern, the greater the effect.

Spoonwood · 2019-02-21 04:59:17

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, imagine if I hadn't changed clothing/buildings at all, and had just removed desert and jungle from the game as the only change....
What would have happened then?

Both advanced players and newer players would be upset at you. Newer players would be upset, because things would be even more difficult on them. Advanced players, because they would end up running horsecarts with buckets of water back to cisterns in towns if they chose to player. No newcomen pumps, no big carts, no rubber balls (alright... those are rare anyways), no cars, no diesel engines, no planes, no oil rigs, no radios either since those require a newcomen multipurpose engine with attachments to make like other things in this list. You would literally remove plenty of items from the game that way. That would thus be significantly different than a temperature overhaul, at least with how biomes stand at present, so really your suggestion is MUCH different than the scope of the update. I thus find it curious as to why you're asking that.

Spoonwood · 2019-02-21 06:31:24

Also, in the real world there do exist some spots optimal for temperature for people at least some of the year. So, I see every reason that optimal or near optimal temperature spots should exist naturally in the game.

I'll suggest bringing the old temperature system back with a significant modification: seasons. Basically, we could imagine ourselves on some planet with a multi-year season cycle. Deserts would heat up to the extreme point during summer, and barely cool off during winter. Tundras would barely heat up or cool down with any season. Jungles would be relatively stable in terms of temperature. Neutral biomes (all others) would fluctuate the most during the season. That would enable good temperature spots to exist, but they wouldn't last or they would move. Buildings and flooring combined would reduce or eliminate seasonal effects. Clothing would also stabilize seasonal effects.

But, like this temperature change the above suggestion would make it for smiths and cooks to have better temperature than farmers or animal tenders, and that wasn't the case before necessarily.

Spoonwood · 2019-02-21 15:23:26

jasonrohrer wrote:

The fact that people weren't wearing clothes or building buildings was something that needed fixing.

The game had balance before. The balance lay in that any station at camp could come as just as good temperature wise as any other station. At least part of that station. I think it was more common that the kiln(s) lay in better temperature spots than anywhere else, but really an Eve could probably put the farm in the better temperature spot if a choice came as needed. But now that balance is gone. All temperature can only get improved from its natural state and since improving the temperature of a farm, or an animal pen, almost surely isn't feasible, that means such a balance no longer comes as realistically achievable.

Also, the way that people weren't wearing clothes or building buildings 'needed fixing', shows that the game designer wants people to play a certain way. But, the game designer, as game designer, does not play the game. The other players do. The above suggests that the motivation of this change lay in trying to change the majority of player's habits. That's a different motivation from trying to make the game more enjoyable for people.

Redram · 2019-02-21 20:33:34

Well I'd understand if you weren't reading this topic anymore after Spoonwood's rants. But:

jasonrohrer wrote:

how would you realize that this was the case? Where would this information be displayed?

The clothes turn to rags when they block a bite (along with a tearing sound). This tells you what happened. If the clothes didn't block it, you died. Aside from that, as another guy said, word of mouth. The same way so much is taught in this game. I honestly thought that passing on game knowledge by word of mouth was one of the charms of this game - complementing the generational family dynamic. Have you added something to explain to a new player the very un-intuitive way shock works? There's tons of things explained nowhere in the tutorial or anywhere else aside from videos. And I would definitely add durability as a third fundamental mechanic, though not directly linked to death. All that said, if the data shows minimal impact to deaths, and you're happy with sales trajectories, then I guess it's no big deal. But seriously though, more storage.

Spoonwood · 2019-02-23 02:34:08

Peremptive wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
3. Kindling can go in basket and backpack (to make early fire tending easier).

So Jason, since these updates have focused on getting more fire into the game, what's the most amount of kindling that you've burned in one life?

seth · 2019-02-25 03:44:44

This is such a wealth of info on all the thought that goes into a game - particularly like the details on the difficulty of adding new core mechanics and keeping things focused.

People are going to have a hard time letting go of the old - what the game used to be, but really every release has just been a passing milestone on the journey to arriving at it's full vision. I only play every once in a while, but these I check these updates quite frequently. Compelling stuff!

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