This Alan Watts video is relevant to some recent discussion

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-23 14:57:10

The fake time-lapse whiteboard isn't great, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZqGUCrje8

This game definitely has a "late stage malaise" problem that I'm trying to actively solve through all sorts of measures.

I think the early game (Eve and first few gens) is really close to being really good, and definitely good enough for now.

Dodge · 2019-04-23 16:08:35

What? How?

You mean the title of the video? Because after a certain point the game isn't challenging anymore ang get's too easy?

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-23 16:11:39

Did you watch the video?

Dodge · 2019-04-23 16:20:50

Yeah but i dont get how it's relevant to late game

Amon · 2019-04-23 16:21:33

Early game is, almost perfect I'd say, I'd even say it'd be too hard to pinpoint what would make it even better.
Well that hits home as a painter with, it is damn relatable indeed.

Perhaps sourveying how late game works, late game goals, late game behaviours. There is a general level of stagnation there as well.

Maybe some god camera timelapses to observe various camps at various stages of development would be an interesting thing to see along with anecdotes.
Thank yo ufor sharing the interesting lecture!

DestinyCall · 2019-04-23 16:27:14

I like Alan Watts. He was a smart man.

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-23 16:54:07

Actually, the time lapse on this one isn't fake!

Pause the video in some spot where the hand is moving and then go backwards with the comma key ",".

You can see that the hand isn't actually drawing stuff, but is actually erasing it. So they drew the whole image on a white board, and then had the hand, holding a marker, erase the image piece by piece. Then they played it in reverse! Kinda brilliant.

Amon · 2019-04-23 16:56:51

Did give it a second look, you can simply reduce video speed to 0.25
It did look woefully too good and crisp to be one of those post edited ones.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-23 17:00:44

Why does milkweed look like the flowers in the video?

Im copying this from a response i gave to futurebird, the first idea refers mostly to what you talk anout:

I think this game needs only two more things

1-actually enforce the challenges it proposes to us, even if not too hard. Kindling should be at risk of running out before we get oil, and water should really run out before pumps.

2-Compromise to the idea that variation in design is needed for variation of gameplay to arise. This means both design a bit for alternative game loops (preferably branching early from main metas) and just inparting variation as a part of everyday design. Maybe we'd live in jungles if we had inseticide, maybe settling near mines early would be best if we had resource x with resource y from savannah doing z. We dont ever do any of this because metas arent jusr optimal, they're the only alternative in a world with little options.

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-04-23 17:01:48)

Wuatduhf · 2019-04-23 17:34:14

I think I understand what Jason's pointing at, Money = Water/Iron in OHOL, since those are the life-blood of growing crops and tools. What is a village to do when it hits Diesel wells, when it has plenty of water from all the Kerosene being run through said wells, and when Airplanes are able to bring back dozens of new ingots?

The issue I have on this is that we're questioning the late-game, when the late-game technically isn't even fully fleshed out. We still have a lot more technology to progress through, yes? Newcomen systems came with update after update, but we're at a standstill for now on seeing new technologies from from them. The loom just gained clothing for making people more individualistic/unique from one another, which is significantly helpful in picking people out from one another when griefing/murders happen. Objectively, once a town becomes fully-established and is at Diesel well, their primary concerns are making sure to continue pumping for oil, keeping the people fed, and exploiting more and more iron/gold veins, right?

I think what we're missing is more choices in the late-game to do once your village has hit the Diesel/Airplane tiers. We need new technologies that replace the 'perfected' technologies of prior, and simplify them or make them less , as we continue moving up the chain of technology.

The early-game Eve cycle has been nearly perfected because there is really only one way to advance; kiln, rabbits, furnace, farm, steel, sheep, compost, clothing.....I don't think we want people to do the same thing over, and over, and over, throughout the entire gameplay loop from Eve -> Diesel well town. Since Jason brought up RTS, we can draw solid parallels that the early-game is pretty standardized, while the 'build order' moving into the mid- and late-game diversifies based on the environment. If we want to see a better endgame, the resources in the end-game need to be rarer or scrutinized not on the biome scale of rarity, but on a map-wide scale. Not just building an end-game where everyone is forced to go through the same "build path", making the same things in the same order.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-23 17:38:48

Wuatduhf wrote:

I think what we're missing is more choices in the late-game to do once your village has hit the Diesel/Airplane tiers. We need new technologies that replace the 'perfected' technologies of prior, and simplify them or make them less , as we continue moving up the chain of technology.
The early-game Eve cycle has been nearly perfected because there is really only one way to advance; kiln, rabbits, furnace, farm, steel, sheep, compost, clothing.....I don't think we want people to do the same thing over, and over, and over, throughout the entire gameplay loop from Eve -> Diesel well town. Since Jason brought up RTS, we can draw solid parallels that the early-game is pretty standardized, while the 'build order' moving into the mid- and late-game diversifies based on the environment. If we want to see a better endgame, the resources in the end-game need to be rarer or scrutinized not on the biome scale of rarity, but on a map-wide scale. Not just building an end-game where everyone is forced to go through the same "build path", making the same things in the same order.

i think all this is true but if mid-game is too easy/too static we'll never be able to design interesting endgames

Dodge · 2019-04-23 17:39:52

I see a couple of ways to make late game chalenging:

Currently late game isn't challenging because too many ressources, no scarcity means no consequences and no challenge

Ideally late game should be as hard as an eve run but different

Food is ultimately the only thing needed for survival, and iron = food but since iron is also used for other tech and future stuff, making it limited is not a good idea and just limits some content like cars,planes etc.

But if climbing in tech required a lot of iron but would then give a steady amount of it, then the challenge would be to manage the at first limited ressource and depending on how it's balanced it could be really hard an challenging.

Upgrading the collapsed mine with a mining rig that runs on oil and making the oil rigs refill but also needing to be upgraded at some point with large amounts of iron, depending on how it's balanced could bring that scarcity of ressources, that would lead to other types of dangers notably conflict with other villages that didnt manage their ressources well.

This in addition to a world that is not infinite but limited in size and ressources could make late game as challenging as an eve run

Then later on the new techs could be dependent on oil, electricity etc

Spoonwood · 2019-04-23 17:59:32

Booklat1 wrote:

1-actually enforce the challenges it proposes to us, even if not too hard. Kindling should be at risk of running out before we get oil, and water should really run out before pumps.

Both sound rather difficult to implement, since ponds spawn randomly, and oil requires a good bit of kindling to get going (to process the iron into the proper parts, and then run the rig, and distiller until it's up to a useable point). People could also grow trees, and then the kindling problem can theoretically go away that way also. So oil would be very difficult to balance in my opinion. Water running out also depends on the number of people in continuous play during a settlement. Like there's a one well town on server12 (which is non-continuous play) which has a kerosone newcomen pump. Water didn't run out, in part, I think though I didn't see the early days, because of water regeneration and the player made a charcoal pump. With a smaller group in continuous play water regeneration can have more of an effect than with a larger group. Since apparently there's no intended average number of people that a continuous settlement has, balancing water such that it really runs out before pumps also seems rather difficult. If a place with 8 ponds near the farm becomes more difficult with respect to water, then a place with only 3 ponds near the farm feels that change even more. So I have doubts about the sort of balance you seek here as all that feasible, or it's kind of a project that requires a bunch of time to refine when there exist bunches of other projects that might be better pursued.

Of course though, such balancing would feel right if nailed down.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-04-23 17:59:59)

Amon · 2019-04-23 18:05:40

Before a doctor gives the prescription, he first looks at the symptoms to learn of the cause.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-23 18:05:52

Spoonwood wrote:

Booklat1 wrote:
1-actually enforce the challenges it proposes to us, even if not too hard. Kindling should be at risk of running out before we get oil, and water should really run out before pumps.
Both sound rather difficult to implement, since ponds spawn randomly, and oil requires a good bit of kindling to get going (to process the iron into the proper parts, and then run the rig, and distiller until it's up to a useable point). People could also grow trees, and then the kindling problem can theoretically go away that way also. So oil would be very difficult to balance in my opinion. Water running out also depends on the number of people in continuous play during a settlement. Like there's a one well town on server12 (which is non-continuous play) which has a kerosone newcomen pump. Water didn't run out, in part, I think though I didn't see the early days, because of water regeneration and the player made a charcoal pump. With a smaller group in continuous play water regeneration can have more of an effect than with a larger group. Since apparently there's no intended average number of people that a continuous settlement has, balancing water such that it really runs out before pumps also seems rather difficult. If a place with 8 ponds near the farm becomes more difficult with respect to water, then a place with only 3 ponds near the farm feels that change even more. So I have doubts about the sort of balance you seek here as all that feasible, or it's kind of a project that requires a bunch of time to refine when there exist bunches of other projects that might be better pursued.
Of course though, such balancing would feel right if nailed down.

Balancing this shouldnt be impossible for a game dev with many years of experience

and of course, the idea isnt to make it impossibly hard, just actually challenging.

btw, kerosene pumps cost 10x less kindling than coal pumps, ideally stuff like ovens and forges could also benefit from oil later

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-23 18:10:27

Yes, I do like the general pattern of "gotta get X going before Y runs out."

That's what's going on in an Eve camp, where you have to get farming going before wild food runs out. And you have to get metal hoe production going before all the sharp stones and skewers run out.

Then, at some point, you have to get wells going before al the ponds run out.

Then you have to get pumps going before all the wells run out.

After that, you're essentially just waiting for iron to run out, and that takes forever, so it pretty much never happens.

There's a limitation of the transition engine which makes---shall I call it "multi-tiered decay"---really hard to implement.

As an example, a domestic berry bush gets picked clean, and becomes languishing. You add fertile soil and water it, and it grows more berries. That cycle is fine, because there's no meta state tracking needed. But if we wanted, say, a berry bush to have only 10 of these cycles before it dies for real, that's currently impossible in the engine. The problem is that the "use counter" is being used to count berries as they are picked, and there can't be another "meta use counter" to track how many times the bush has gone through the cycle.

Bushes are okay in this regard, and I don't think they're a big problem.

But I'd really like the Newcomen pump wells to go permanently dry eventually, and require an upgrade to oil. But the "use counter" is used on the full well to track how much water comes out of it, and thus there can't be a meta use counter to track how many cycles the well gets used for.

One example of a way to "fix" bushes would be to have the domestic type to require a bowl to pick in one swoop, instead of berry-by-berry (the bush would have to look different, or something). So then the use counter wouldn't be used to track berry picking, and instead could, maybe, be used to track steps in the meta cycle before the bush dies.

Similarly, for the pump wells, each burning could give you one bucket (or maybe a "mega bucket") of water, freeing the use-counter to track the meta lifecycle of the pump itself.

Also, I'll do a VOG survey right now, and see how many villages have which type of pump on bigserver2 currently.

BerrypickerAF · 2019-04-23 18:13:39

Don't you dare insult the whiteboard style, it's a wonderful supporting visual aide here.

Anyway, if you meant to compare that endless pursuit of pleasure leads to eventual pursuit of pain, therefor creating griefers out of 'boredom' - then I'm sorry but that is literally just human nature.

No matter what you do with your game, you can not change the fact that humans are emotional and unpredictable beings. It almost seems as if you want to mold us into the 'perfect players' for your perfect game, and enforcing your idea of how people should play your game only your way, otherwise they are wrong in your eyes.
I've seen you basically express this desire of yours, even if you use the front of 'but it's open source, you can do whatev', it's not a secret that you don't even acknowledge players if they use the zoom mod and refuse to work with them, because it is 'against your vision'.

Look Jason, it's okay if you just want to create your own vision - but you can't also expect people to love everything you make and play it only how you intend.
Where is the fun in that? We might as well watch a movie or read a book at that point, it's hardly playing if we're just following your intended scripts.

With all due respect, I think you have to work on yourself and how you view your players if you want to be stay a successful game developer.

Last edited by BerrypickerAF (2019-04-23 18:24:58)

Wuatduhf · 2019-04-23 18:13:41

Booklat1 wrote:

i think all this is true but if mid-game is too easy/too static we'll never be able to design interesting endgames

That's fair. I don't know exactly where we currently mark the mid-game; I would like to say it's right as you start building the first newcomen engine. Right around that time is when we are able to start diversifying in different directions, making more buildings, making newcomens, making Loom & proper clothing, vulcanized wheels for carts, tree farms, etc.

I think that tech period could use a little bit more of a 'horizontal expansion' for more techs you can do around that time that are unique and also can help the village out. Aside for that, the late-game still needs more technological diversity, because cars/airplanes is still very much the end-game.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-23 18:18:21

wells were of course an example, iron can also have more tiers to make it limited earlier and oil could maybe have a chance to run out

i dont think that the general idea of "nerf x to add upgrade" should be all we get, but we're far from exhausted of it

Dodge · 2019-04-23 18:18:32

Couldnt there be something like each time the pump is fired it has a 5-10% chance of going dry and needing to be upgraded to oil

Booklat1 · 2019-04-23 18:19:53

BerrypickerAF wrote:

With all due respect, I think you have to work on yourself and how you view your players if you want to be a successful game developer.

he is a succesful developer, wtf

BerrypickerAF · 2019-04-23 18:21:03

Booklat1 wrote:

BerrypickerAF wrote:
With all due respect, I think you have to work on yourself and how you view your players if you want to be a successful game developer.

he is a succesful developer, wtf

okay, sorry, STAY a successful dev.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-23 18:28:46

Dodge wrote:

Couldnt there be something like each time the pump is fired it has a 5-10% chance of going dry and needing to be upgraded to oil

i think this works better as an upkeep to oil, each time it breaks you have to drill again and has a change to go actually dry.
so every cycle can fail, sometimes permanently

actually works for pumps too but 5 to 10% completely negates the one advantage of coal (being its cheap to fire), might be overkill

Again, ovens are also too good and heaters could exist

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-04-23 18:32:58)

Spoonwood · 2019-04-23 19:55:22

jasonrohrer wrote:

And you have to get metal hoe production going before all the sharp stones and skewers run out.

No. Round stones come as sufficiently abundant. It's just that it would require dedicated milkweed farming to stone hoes or more rope gathering, so it would end up somewhat difficult to implement, because of the problems with milkweed getting yoinked.

jasonrohrer wrote:

After that, you're essentially just waiting for iron to run out, and that takes forever, so it pretty much never happens.

For shovels, maybe... however soil can get imported using baskets, a horsecart, and a backpack also. For kindling and tilling tools though round stones come as far more abundant than iron. It's not so practical with player dynamics though to minimize iron usage to support the food supply. I would rather use steel hoes than dedicated milkweed farming and using stone hoes also.

jasonrohrer wrote:

But I'd really like the Newcomen pump wells to go permanently dry eventually, and require an upgrade to oil. But the "use counter" is used on the full well to track how much water comes out of it, and thus there can't be a meta use counter to track how many cycles the well gets used for.

What if newcomen charcoal pumps broke after a certain number of uses like steel tools, while a newcomen kerosone pump didn't break? I mean it is kind of funny that the pumps run so much, but never explode. Could involve a repair process then, which sounds more interesting than the well just going dry.

Solbusaur · 2019-04-23 20:15:52

Spoonwood wrote:

I mean it is kind of funny that the pumps run so much, but never explode. Could involve a repair process then, which sounds more interesting than the well just going dry.

Maintenance sounds like a much better motive for pushing through the tech tree than having a chance for it to go dry.
An unfair surprise would be bad game design. Having a pump slowly deteriorate, demanding more resources, makes it clear to the player that they have a deadline

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#1 2019-04-23 14:57:10

This Alan Watts video is relevant to some recent discussion

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