The Midnight Plan

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-04 18:08:11

After fixing the family tree browser late last night, I still had to do the dishes (family already asleep). After doing the dishes, it was after 1am. This is very bad. Bad Jason! I know better. But there I am.

I'm sure that some of you around here have noticed something of a manic cycle that I go through, where the ideas just flow like a hydrant, and I'm kinda all over the place for a while. "Jason, what are you doing man? Changing the game drastically again?!" And then that phase ends, and I go back to head-down work again.

So last night, at about 1:20am, before going to bed, I had to pull out some sheets of paper and scribble down one last idea.

My previous ideas, with cheap wall and lock building using the help/approval of elders had some problems:

1. Walls are useless for limiting property access without locks.

2. Locks are relatively high tech (forge and many steel tools required), meaning that limited property access is several generations away.

3. As pretty much everybody knows, locks are a pain in the ass to use in daily operations. Take the key out in your hand when going in and out, key in the backpack... you need a backpack. You have to duplicate it and give it to some kid without a backpack. How do you manage variable access to different buildings without a key nightmare?

4. Access control with keys is too coarse as it stands (only 10 unique keys, and adding a lot more would tax the transition engine, and make it even more tedious to make locks and keys).

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Walls, floors, roads, and tracks (and even locks) serve other purposes in the game, notably shelter and accomplishment. It's currently pretty hard to build a big building or a long road. It should be hard. When you see a big building, it's like, holy crap, that's amazing! How did people ever build such a thing? Where'd they find that many rocks? Trans-generational projects are great. I don't want to sacrifice the current "building balance" on the altar of easy limited property access.

And yes, quickly leveraging walls and locks would be the easiest way forward (for me!), but it's not a perfect solution, and it would simultaneously wreck the balance and emotional significance of buildings in the game. And that solution would be such a pain to use that I can imagine most players just not using it anyway. So then we have cheap buildings everywhere, but still no viable limited property access.... blahhhh.

So it seems like there needs to be a new system to easily limit property access... something orthogonal to buildings. Something that feels like a non-accomplishment. Something that can obviously be cheap with out feeling out of step with the difficulty of making other things in the game. A new "atom" in the game.

And really, with the walled milkweed garden, "walls" are a weird solution. What you'd have in real life would be a fence. And maybe not a very high one. Just a marker that people generally respect by default. You don't climb over someone else's fence. You just don't.

(And don't get the wrong idea with the walled milkweed garden idea.... it's not that you're hogging all the rope for yourself, but that you're being careful about who gets it, and the griefer who is building a bow, or building a horse cart to steal stuff, doesn't get any rope.)

So, here's the plan:

Two new kinds of objects, which are a "property fence" and a "property gate".
Building either a fence or a gate requires the help of an elder. You can lay out a proposed fence and gate very easily and cheaply (twigs on the ground showing the area you want to fence in). Then you need to seek an elder to come and "finish" it for you with their elder stone, which you can't pick up because you're not old enough. And the elder cannot lay out proposed fences themselves (they are too old to carry bundles of twigs). They can only approve the layouts of others.
No one can pass through a property fence.
When a gate is created, the person who built it (with the blessing of the elder) owns it, and is the only person who can pass through it. Additional owners can be assigned verbally by standing near the gate and saying something like "Jordan Johnson can enter" or "You can enter" if there's only one other person around. Likewise, "Jordan Johnson cannot enter" or "You cannot enter" will remove someone from the access list. There's a hierarchy of ownership. Jordan Johnson can add others too, and remove them, but he can't remove you, because you're above him as an owner, and removing Jordan removes everyone he added, etc.
Owners can open and close the gate at will. When it is open, anyone can pass through it. When it is closed, only owners may pass through.
When the owner dies, they are taken off the top of the hierarchy-list for the gate, and any of the people they directly added, who are still living, are now at the top of the hierarchy, with the oldest living owner at the very top. If no one living is left on the list, the gate collapses back to a bundle of twigs, allowing anyone to pass again.
A top owner can dedicate their land to the public domain by removing all other owners before the end of life and then dying with no sub-owners. The gate will collapse. If people want to build it again, and make the land private again, they need the help of an elder.
As long as some living person owns a property gate, it will last forever.
A property fence becomes rickety in an hour, and collapses to a bundle of twigs in two hours. Anyone can fix a rickety fence just by clicking on it with bare hands. I.e., basic "property maintenance" is necessary on the property perimeter once a generation. If someone cares to keep access limited, this will happen. If no one cares, the fence will fall.
Mousing over a property gate shows the name of the current top owner. "Jason Rohrer's Property Gate"

Obviously, all of this stuff is optional. If you don't want to limit access to property, don't. And maybe the elders of your town have decided to approve no fence requests. Maybe that's the culture of your village or family---it's a commune. Maybe they approved some a long time ago, and those fences are "grandfathered in", but they decided to approve no more, after a while. Maybe, when you get old yourself, you'll change that tradition. (And this is exactly the kinds of things that go on in real towns... in Davis, they haven't annexed any new land into the city for 40 years or something).

Maybe your elders approve fences, but no gates, to help organize the village.

Maybe they only approve gates on actual buildings (requiring trans-generational projects before access can be limited).

Maybe they only approved one large fence around the whole village, and keep gate ownership with the current elder, but generally leave the gate open (but will slam it shut in an emergency, like when a griefer is about to ride away with a cart full of pies).

Maybe there's a "kid fence" around the center of the village, and they have a coming of age ceremony, when it becomes safe for you to venture further, they give you access to the wilderness gate.

There's one hole in this idea, and it's that it doesn't allow for raiding. I think I'll punt on that for now. It still allows for theft via gaining trust, which is probably more interesting than brute-force raiding anyway...

Elsayal · 2019-04-04 18:14:34

I like it

Amon · 2019-04-04 18:18:29

I like it mostly because it seems like a wicker fence if it's, could be nice simpyl for decoration too, so it seems people will use it for more than just limiting property. It also seems relatively fine of an idea. But it will be interesting

Also its very good to just ramble out ALL ideas because probably only 10% or less of all those ideas will ever be good, and havign a reference is good to even dictate what is bad - good.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-04 18:29:22

I dont like it at all, its still gamey and unrealistic, reminds me of a system a friend made for a minecraft mod, what it did was stop conflict over protected areas. Like you said, there's a neat thing going on with people keeping knives restricted and in bags. Sometimes pies, shears, hammers and hatched get the same treatment. Maybe make it so a hierarchy emerges based on having tools for important jobs?

I'd much rather see locked doors being breakable (not easily) and a resistant security type of door being added.

Whatever · 2019-04-04 18:31:44

BladeWoods wrote:

What about instead of a magic hat or elder stone, you add new industrial machines that can easily make walls? And better sources of limited resources like rocks, limestone, and clay.
I'd much prefer a tech answer than a magic answer that would radically change the game.

happynova · 2019-04-04 18:41:51

You do have an interesting habit of throwing out all kinds of ridiculous stuff, Jason, and then somehow managing to sort through it all and settle on something sane and possibly even quite clever. I have noticed that.

As for this scheme, I still think maybe it's kind of addressing a problem that's not really a problem while potentially creating others, but I don't hate it like I hated, say, the hat idea. You've clearly thought through and addressed the worst possible snags, and even if I think it's unnecessary, it does have the benefit of being a way in which towns can be and feel different from one another, which is something I like in general. So I'm not going to pout or anything if you go with it. Well, not unless it goes horribly wrong, of course. If nothing else, it seems like an interesting experiment.

(I might feel bad about being the cranky old elder who constantly says no to people asking me to put up fences, though. Because I think I might be.)

But I do have to wonder... just how big are these sticks that old people can't even pick up?!

Redram · 2019-04-04 18:42:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

So, here's the plan:

What purpose is the elder part of this serving, again? Is that to make it harder to grief, or to give more sense of 'family respect' for elders, or...?

This idea does a lot of what I was trying to address with my post #66 in the 'Architect's Hat' thread. Except that I address griefers simply by having the lock tell you who has keys to it (so that if necessary you can kill them and nullify the lock), rather than require a complicated 2-person construction team. I still think the whole 'elder stone' thing is complicating things way too much. It's hard enough to complete projects without having to cajole someone else to help you. I still ask: What if there are no elders atm? What if the only elders are incompetent? What if they're trying to finish their own project and have no time to help? What if they're happynova? Just fix locks. Locks can do all the things you want here, without the magical elder stone.

Last edited by Redram (2019-04-04 18:44:09)

happynova · 2019-04-04 18:49:13

Redram wrote:

What if they're happynova?

You can try to convince me. I might be swayable if I really like you.

The elder thing does seem a bit artificial to me, but I like it as an anti-griefer technique.

futurebird · 2019-04-04 18:50:45

What exactly are people going to lock up, though? Food? Why hide food that could keep your town going? Clothing? it decays. It should be on a person till that happens or it's wasted. Knives and bows? That makes some sense, until they are needed and these things are easy to make.

The only think worth locking up in my view are papers and signs so they don't wanter away and signs can already be locked.

I have no interest in roping off anything, I want to see what other do with it. I don't like the idea of finding an abandon town and basically you can't look at anything because it's all locked up.

I liked the idea from another thread about making walls more useful with shelves and making colors to mark tools as belonging to certain work stations.

If I want to have a locked plot and build the way I want I can play minecraft. Which is a good game, but I've never felt like a person playing it, just a kind of designer-god.

I like coming back to see if the project I started was completed or totally changed or ripped up or botched or made better than my own ideas. The problem of having little areas that individuals control is a lot like the griefer issue. And it's a solution like making it so you can't stab anyone. It will *reduce* how much we have to care and interact with others.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-04 18:53:21

How big are these twigs, so that elders can't pick them up? Tiny! They are just very pokey, and the elders have thin skin, so they can't carry pokey things.

The other way to go about this is with a crown, like I said before, and the crown approves property requests. But the elder thing is more organic, less subject to weird problems or exploitation (lost crown, stolen crown, murdered queen, one village stealing another's crown). Like, there's no way to usurp the power of an elder, other than getting old yourself. If there's no elder around just now, then wait for a bit. You want to permanently demarcate land as your own heritable property? You can't expect to do that instantly! Your request requires some consideration.

Finally, as far as it being "hard enough to build without needing two people," the property fences are totally separate from building. They don't actually mark areas of land or permit building. They just limit access by blocking walking. So you can build a house anywhere, without fenced property. Maybe ask an elder to help you fence the land around it later.

And making a fence will be infinite and easy. Just pick one bundle of twigs, and lay infinite proposed fences. The hard part is finding an elder and convincing them that this area of land should really be yours alone. But once they agree, they just walk around your fence blessing each part of it. Easy.

Assuming that you have an elder on board with your plan, laying and finishing a huge fenced area should take 30 seconds or so.

Dodge · 2019-04-04 18:53:27

The concept of property is great but having some sort of magical force field that forbids you to go somewhere not so much imo

With code locks the impractical issue of key locks would be solved

And actual houses that you can enter would look great and allow for every family in village to have their own house with their own stuff in it, you give the code to your kids or trusted people and they would have their own private home.

There could even be different types of houses (log, stone, modern) and even bigger structures like castles,skyscrappers and also shops to sell/trade goods a barn for animals etc..

This would also make a lot more room for furnitures like beds, chairs etc. since space is limited in the actuals towns right now

House from stardew valley:

Hyrule castle from legend of zelda:

Village example from RPG maker

Post from the architect hat topic:

Dodge wrote:

I played Rust, 500+ hours and counting
But in Rust they have code locks, key locks are the first of course but having the key on you or even hidden is a constant fear of getting your base looted so rushing code lock is one of the first thing people do in game.
Since we dont have that complex electronic system at the moment it could be a mechanical code lock
https://i.ibb.co/P5y292J/4c24c234-0dc9-45b7-af3d-844cbfd4bbcf.jpg
And to avoid losing code and locking house forever the lock could rust after a few generations.

Regarding the second layer houses, they could use only one tile (less realistic, could look kinda cute) but they could also take multiple tiles like 4x4 for a log house for example and when you go in it you have access to a larger area like 15x15 or wathever
My reasoning is that if we ever get skyscrapers or any larger building in game at one point, a 1x1 skyscraper would look kinda ridiculous but if it takes 10x10 or more it would give a real feeling of a massive structure.

Turnipseed · 2019-04-04 18:53:48

Hmmm but how would we get said twigs?

And what constitutes the elder is it just any old bag or is it the single oldest person?

Can we get scroll over text?

I.E. (elder oldman baggins)

Last edited by Turnipseed (2019-04-04 18:58:31)

happynova · 2019-04-04 18:56:12

futurebird wrote:

Knives and bows? That makes some sense, until they are needed and these things are easy to make.

Weapons are really the only thing that it makes sense to lock up if you're anything but a griefer, but I think it's at least a better way of locking up weapons than with an actual lock. If only because you can't accidentally render them inaccessible forever by losing the key.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-04 18:57:06

futurebird wrote:

What exactly are people going to lock up, though? Food? Why hide food that could keep your town going? Clothing? it decays. It should be on a person till that happens or it's wasted. Knives and bows? That makes some sense, until they are needed and these things are easy to make.

I've hid food before in bad towns, I didnt want to starve and wasnt playing too solidary.

but 99% of the time there's not just enough food for me but for generations after too. I hoard tools and goods for short whiles occasionaly, usually when working on a big project.

but for this bags are just better.

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-04-04 18:58:26)

Redram · 2019-04-04 19:17:10

jasonrohrer wrote:

And making a fence will be infinite and easy. Just pick one bundle of twigs, and lay infinite proposed fences. The hard part is finding an elder and convincing them that this area of land should really be yours alone. But once they agree, they just walk around your fence blessing each part of it. Easy.

Well, until you said that I did think that the good aspect of this idea is that no griefer pair would bother spawning in at different times in a coordinated fashion so they'd have both an old an young griefer. After that statement, not so sure...you make it sound pretty worth.

Weapons and tools can be locked in boxes. Just fix locks so they're convenient and don't waste iron. So far the only legit things these fences would really be for would be your milkweed example, or a sheep pen, or some other critical resource. I take it you're ok Jason with people now having easy early access to sheep pens? Or can sheep magically walk over these fences, but not people?

Last edited by Redram (2019-04-04 19:19:12)

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-04 19:18:30

Maybe you take a branch, process in with flint, and then get an infinite bundle of twigs that can be used to lay out proposed fences and gates.

Dodge, I like the house idea..... but that would be a pretty gigantic change, especially in terms of the underlying implementation, presentation in the client, etc. I'm trying to do something inside the framework of a tile based, single-map game. That's the fabric of OHOL that I've got to work with. I can't go down the rabbit hole implementing a totally different map system at this point. "See you all in a few months, k?"

futurebird wrote:

I have no interest in roping off anything, I want to see what other do with it. I don't like the idea of finding an abandon town and basically you can't look at anything because it's all locked up.

If you have no interest, then don't, right? You don't have to if you don't want to. If your village builds no fences, the game will continue to function exactly like it functions now.

And the whole point of property gate is that they die with you, unless you pass them on before you die. So they will have no effect at all in abandoned towns (unlike locks). They only still function of the current owner is living. Likewise, after a server reset, all gates collapse.

(Even in Rust, code locks were weird, because they'd outlast someone's tenure in the game, so there'd be abandoned houses around that were still locked up tight---you'd have to wait for the walls to decay to enter, or spend tools breaking through the walls.)

And while I hear everyone about this not being an organic, emergent solution to the problem (which is what kept me away from such things for such a long time), in the scope of one-hour lives in a difficult crafting/survival game, I don't know that an organic solution is possible. I want things to be hard, generally. But limited property access is such a fundamental atom for a social structure that it just can't be hard.

There are certain abstractions in the game that help "smooth over" realism for the sake of a working game at this timescale. Being stuck with the murder weapon and moving slow is one example. Cursing is another example (though it may not be needed anymore.)

Managing keys, or codes, and passing them on to your heirs is probably just too realistic. Actual paper birth certificates with names, or photo IDs, would be too realistic. Instead, you name people "by magic," but it serves as a sensible abstraction.

Likewise, people in real life have systems in place that limit access to property. We can try to build such systems from scratch, from first principles (physical property access based on logs and iron ore), but in the scope of an hour, that's probably not realistic. You need to "just do it," so you can get on with the real work in the game. You can't devote generations to building property access infrastructure. Just like you need to just name someone, and get on with it, without having to repeat your name to everyone you meet. (I originally wanted names to be emergent, just like they are in real life....)

And all that said, there is something organic about an owned gate, and inheritance. If the town gets sick of that guy hogging all the tools in there, they can kill him, and the gate will fall open. Seems like fodder for some pretty interesting interactions.

Think of it like a backpack, but bigger, and you need to ask permission from town elders to claim such a big backpack as your own, and you can share access to that backpack with whoever you please, individually.

How people might use that new atom in creative and unexpected ways is pretty much limitless.

Thaulos · 2019-04-04 19:23:51

I actually kinda, sorta, like the idea. So many questions though.

Might be best if a property could only be inherited by a single person afterwards. A sort of property heir. Perhaps you could name a hair somehow? "My heir is futurebird" could make futurebird "own" the plot afterwards.
What happens with children? Would they need to be added individually? Would they inherit the access?
Would members of the "household" be able to remove themselves? Lets say a couple of them want to go out and open a new farm on their own plot, can they just leave?
How big of a plot would you allow? Buildings can be huge, would you allow people to have huge plots?
How can someone "fight" against a plot? Lets say they are hoarding all the food from town. Can people go and "invade"?
How can people never be trapped inside their plots? What if I build a 8x8 plot and then 8 other people build 8x8 plots around me?
What if I don't have access to the plot? What if I'm already inside? Do I get teleported out?

Players need be able to counter all this though. Property rights should be enforced by players and not by some God ability.

Maybe instead of all these elder super powers and special magical fences. You could just add to the game a sort of a cheap but blocking fence you could build that wouldn't be that difficult to create. (maybe a fence made of round rocks?). Then focus all this "magic" on a special "gate"/"door" that doesn't require locks and is controlled by a single person.

Doors/gates/fences could be deconstructed by anyone just like any other item in-game. If you don't like people breaking into your area you need to protect it yourself. The magic door/gate would just allow you to bypass locks in favor of some list of names.

Potjeh · 2019-04-04 19:24:37

I like these fences a lot, I'm just not really sold on the idea of elder approval.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-04 19:25:18

Interesting question about the sheep and these property fences.

I am really thinking about them as abstract concepts, completely separate from building. Maybe sheep can indeed walk through any gate...

Sorta like: All humans in the game inherently agree to this abstraction, just like they inherently agree to go by the name a mother gives to her baby (because mousing over will simply show you no other name). Like, you just can't bring yourself to cross a property line without permission.

I've even thought about it being a "chalk line" on the ground, instead of a fence. Did you ever see the Lars von Trier movie Dogville?

1302025196-dogville.jpg?1367781350

But I don't like the way that looks enough to make the game look like that, with lines everywhere....

Booklat1 · 2019-04-04 19:29:22

jasonrohrer wrote:

And while I hear everyone about this not being an organic, emergent solution to the problem (which is what kept me away from such things for such a long time), in the scope of one-hour lives in a difficult crafting/survival game, I don't know that an organic solution is possible. I want things to be hard, generally. But limited property access is such a fundamental atom for a social structure that it just can't be hard.
(...)
Think of it like a backpack, but bigger, and you need to ask permission from town elders to claim such a big backpack as your own, and you can share access to that backpack with whoever you please, individually.

I have two questions though;

When was the last time your survivability really depended on hoarding something, maybe a pie?

Have you considered that bags are in fact cheap and good enough personal storage thus making other options bad?

Spoonwood · 2019-04-04 19:30:26

Whatever wrote:

BladeWoods wrote:
What about instead of a magic hat or elder stone, you add new industrial machines that can easily make walls? And better sources of limited resources like rocks, limestone, and clay.
I'd much prefer a tech answer than a magic answer that would radically change the game.

But don't governments grant property rights by fiat in the real world?

Also, Jason, I think that it might interest you to consider why the concept of personal property even exists in the first place. I'm not sure there's a clear cut answer... here's a quora on that: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-conc … erty-exist But nonetheless, without understanding some of the reasons as to why it exists in the real world, I'm not sure that this game would end feeling like it simulates reality all that well. Elders who speak property rights into existence? But in the real world, elders would have to have social influence, and thus have the respect of their communities, to have the ability to dictate when property rights can exist. Not every elder would earn that, I think.

Redram · 2019-04-04 19:33:20

jasonrohrer wrote:

Maybe sheep can indeed walk through any gate...

Just the gates? So I just build a huge pen of the magic fences, and then build a little airlock around the 'magic gate', out of 'real' oven bases/walls/fences etc. Still super-easy gen1 by the sound of it.

Amon · 2019-04-04 19:34:18

Coppicing, works with most trees, but is most common for willows.
The result is then used for wicker walls or fences, baskets and other very very very useful things.

Chop down any tree to have the stump continously and infinitely produce the needed wood, only needing to be cut with a sharp stone, flint or knife.<

Or treat/clean up a willow tree with a knife once and then continously keep cutting down the formed branches.

Though parcells people owned were also banning animals from entering. In some towns we had laws where if a chicken entered your yard it was in your right to kill it.

Last edited by Amon (2019-04-04 19:36:38)

Thaulos · 2019-04-04 19:35:31

Maybe if the magic gates/fences were properly implemented we could have a template for a jailing system. Add the option of being able to arrest someone by binding them and carry them to a specific place and you have a jail.

Turnipseed · 2019-04-04 19:36:30

If the twigs are an endless resource like saltwater please make them replaceable like salt water otherwise they will be spammed like milkweed seeds were

Also i dont see how this helps trade/war happen. It only solves the building problem not the why we would ever care to trade problem

Last edited by Turnipseed (2019-04-04 19:38:10)

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The Midnight Plan

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