Update: Boundless World

jasonrohrer · 2019-11-08 22:36:03

Thank you for your patience during the long-running Arc and Rift experiments, which have shed light on a number of important design issues and improved the core of the game immensely. The list of Rift-based discoveries is long, but to summarize, we have a better biome map layout, a more balanced birth placement algorithm, a tap-out system to ensure upper-end resource scarcity, a more powerful and intuitive cursing system, and a map system.

It's time to test out these improvements on an infinite map and in a perpetual world, shifting the focus away from community-wide story arcs and back to individual family arcs, happening in parallel. The full reasoning behind this change is described here:

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8320

Eves spawn into this boundless world whenever they are needed, when there are too few families or too many babies for the existing mothers to handle. These conditions occur rarely, so a new Eve will be a special event. The privilege of being Eve is granted to a player with a relatively high genetic fitness score. Eves are placed in a zigzag pattern spreading out to the west, which looks like this:

Thus, to find older villages, you can walk to the east, while walking west will take you to the frontier.

Each water well and oil strike taps out ground water and oil in a radius that matches this Eve placement pattern, meaning there can be roughly one water well and one oil well per Eve settlement, though distant resource outposts are possible.

The map has been set to never cull anything, except for during server updates, when areas that haven't been visited in a full seven days are cleared to conserve database space. Thus, in active areas, perpetual road networks are possible.

Things will obviously end up being more spread out than they were in the Rift, so the plane will become useful again. To make the plane more reliable, your destination can now be set by looking at a map immediately before taking off---you will land at the closest available landing strip to the map's destination.

With genetic fitness scores mattering more than ever before, the question becomes: how long can you keep your offspring alive, and what will you have to do in order to keep them alive? The resources in the immediate area surrounding a family's home base will run out. Survival beyond that will require quite a bit of planning and coordination.

The wastefulness of high-value food items has been reduced, because adults now have a large overflow store to accommodate the last food item that made them full. This overflow area starts small and grows along with your stomach size, so young children still have a tense eating game. This also helps to differentiate low-value food like berries from high-value foods like pies. Munching four berries is no longer equivalent to eating a piece of pie, because the pie can fill a larger portion of your overflow store. This graph shows the size of your overflow store, based on your stomach size:

Indoor areas have been buffed by applying a flat time-per-food-pip bonus while indoors. Being indoors makes you burn food much slower, no matter your heating or clothing situation. Mousing over your temperature meter now gives you information about your current food burn rate.

When a well or oil strike taps out neighboring areas, gradient markers are now left to the north and south as well as to the east and west, making finding the well easier.

The kill-spam bug has been fixed. In order to target (or re-target) someone, you must first drop your weapon.

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-11-08 22:47:36

Rip rift.

You were misunderstood, and not everyone hated you. You were needed and many couldn't stomach you.

But we turn the page and begin anew

Stormyzabeast · 2019-11-08 22:48:46

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!! Free at last free at last!

seth · 2019-11-08 22:53:36

wow this is exciting!

seth · 2019-11-09 01:00:31

Gotta say, I'm really enjoying this one.. It may be partially because I got in right at the start, and got to experience the thrill of everyone scrambling to get a foothold in on a civilization.

I started as an Eve because I had a fairly high genetic score! And immediately realized I had completely forgotten how to play the early game. We died out.

... and then proceeded to die out 6 or 7 more times as I was born to different overwhelmed eves.

At one point I kept getting born to one eve, who was having like 5 kids at once. I was thinking, that's weird, why aren't I spawning as an eve?

Well as it turns out, because I had died so many times through no fault of myself or my mom, my genetic score plummeted (as I'm sure did everyone elses) meaning there were no more eligible eves. That seems like a bit of an issue! I'd like to have another go at being an eve in a situation like that..

Maybe people should be penalized so hard for dying in that very frantic period of time where the are very few civilizations.. or maybe the barrier to being an eve should be lowered if no eligible eves are around.. Or the genetic score could have some kind of lag built in - I'm sure I'll get my score back up, but in the short term that was pretty bad.

Started at 35 I think, and it went down to 22..

Anyways, once I was born to a more stable family had a great life where our well was dry, and all the local ones were, and finally as an elder I went out in search of a wet one, following the gradients.. I came across a busy town that had set up with the well. And I was low on food, but I decided not to steal and made my way back home.

As my food went lower and lower, I repeated "I've got to make it home. I've got to make it home.. I've got to make it home" - but just as a berry bush came into view. I fell down dead.

I imagine my poor family was still shivering by the fire awaiting my return..

seth · 2019-11-09 01:03:09

I also want to say, the feeling of mystery about the world is back.. And I love that the wells drying up forces us to explore more.. and finding another town feels miraculous.

I did miss this feeling of wonder than an unlimited world provides.. We could wander endlessly in the world, so when we encounter another person, it's a miracle.

seth · 2019-11-09 01:17:17

heh, after server restart it all went to chaos again.. now I'm out of lives.

Not really a big deal for me, I've played enough today, but feels like this is not what the intent of that feature is for.

Saolin · 2019-11-09 03:24:08

Am I reading correctly that we get 100+ bonus food capacity once reaching maximum food capacity?

psyduck · 2019-11-09 10:11:42

Do most people want to be Eve?

I want to give that probability to the person Eve wants to do!

For those who want to do
I select "No Eve" before starting. if possible....

Last edited by psyduck (2019-11-09 13:05:53)

Kinrany · 2019-11-09 11:30:46

seth wrote:

At one point I kept getting born to one eve, who was having like 5 kids at once. I was thinking, that's weird, why aren't I spawning as an eve?
Well as it turns out, because I had died so many times through no fault of myself or my mom, my genetic score plummeted (as I'm sure did everyone elses) meaning there were no more eligible eves. That seems like a bit of an issue! I'd like to have another go at being an eve in a situation like that..
Maybe people should be penalized so hard for dying in that very frantic period of time where the are very few civilizations.. or maybe the barrier to being an eve should be lowered if no eligible eves are around.. Or the genetic score could have some kind of lag built in - I'm sure I'll get my score back up, but in the short term that was pretty bad.

Should fitness be relative to that of other players?

miskas · 2019-11-09 14:48:40

Kinrany wrote:

Should fitness be relative to that of other players?

no, life expectancy should be, not genes

here is a way to do it without isolate players to pro and noobs.
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8339

Last edited by miskas (2019-11-09 14:48:59)

fug · 2019-11-09 21:17:45

Saolin wrote:

Am I reading correctly that we get 100+ bonus food capacity once reaching maximum food capacity?

You can't reach that until he introduces feasts (aka really big food) or yum since the highest possible overeat currently is 19 (fish or full combination pie)

wondible · 2019-11-10 02:26:26

Had a relatively good day.

First life mom needed me to do smiting hammer because she was out of slots. I ended up doing most of the tools (file, bow saw, few hoes, shreas/knife as we got close to sheep, pick) and several rounds of pottery. I don't think I ran out of slots but I never committed to the last one because I couldn't really get into another trade. No kids though.

I fully filled my tool slots on at least one life. Never before tonight has slot limit been an issue.

Somehow I got an eve at 35 score. Wandered a lot looking for water/clay, daughter build the kiln in a crowded spot, but there were people running around when I died, and somehow, miraculously, my score went up. I usually consider eve camps a sure way to crash your score. Gen 5 is now at least a half hour silent, so probably didn't make it.

Last town had a stranger who seemed like he didn't know how to use a knife (he ended up putting in my basket, but then took my horsecart), people stealing stuff, and lots of bears brought into town.

Oh yeah, and the food overfill has been amazing at improved survivability and fueling up for long trips. I also seemed to be casually getting double digit yum.

Last edited by wondible (2019-11-10 02:28:29)

MrGold · 2019-11-18 03:58:33

I really like the idea of forcing us to cooperate together

Spoonwood · 2019-12-04 09:50:45

I don't think it's good that the zizag tends left ad infinitum, since it suggests that the Tarr monument will turn into dead content over time on bs2.

Punkypal · 2019-12-04 16:44:38

I'm not liking it either. The "zigzag" is too narrow. New Eves will be not too far off the center line but now are appearing so far the the west it's effectively not possible to get back to "civilization" We aren't really rebuilding civilization if every few days the entire server just shifts to a practically new world every week.

Also Eves seem to appear too frequently. Might have something to do with a vast number of players who insta die so a struggling family can't get any offspring. I've been looking at the family trees and ill see a generation where 12 children born and 11 of those all SIDs themselves? Seriously? The 24 lives per hour needs to be lowered to 12 or less. If I have a kid in a city they choose to live 95% of the time. If I'm outside of a town doing some work they die 4 out of 5 at least before I can even say "hi". So I assume you want to be born in a town? Maybe wait more than half a second to let someone tell you if the town is literally just 5 seconds away.

Finally, greifers are still too powerful in their ability to completely ruin the game for others. 1) It's hard to curse anyone if you're too young to write their name out. 2) Cursing seems to do nothing anyway. So what if they appear 100 spaces away on a infinite world. They will come back. The curse should do something like if you get cursed after you just killed someone, you can't pick up any weapons for a week. Want to be a hunter or a cook? Too bad. (unless you kill someone who just murdered).

Spoonwood · 2019-12-04 17:53:36

Punkypal wrote:

We aren't really rebuilding civilization if every few days the entire server just shifts to a practically new world every week.

You're starting over from scratch, so you'd be rebuilding civilization.

I will note that people were playing with belltower towns far away like as has happened now before The Rift in "Boundless World 1.0" so to speak.

Last night saw only four families according to fug. That's not Eves appearing too frequently, but not often enough.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-12-04 17:54:29)

Punkypal · 2019-12-06 14:47:38

Spoonwood wrote:

You're starting over from scratch, so you'd be rebuilding civilization.

I guess you're right that it's a game of rebuilding civilization. Just never actually doing it. We start, then we start again, then we start again, etc. I suppose you can play Monopoly except only go around the board once and then reset the game completely and start over. After about the sixth time doing this you start to question what's the point and why are you bothering. Which is what pretty much all new players are wondering after about a week.

Spoonwood wrote:

I will note that people were playing with belltower towns far away like as has happened now before The Rift in "Boundless World 1.0" so to speak.
Last night saw only four families according to fug. That's not Eves appearing too frequently, but not often enough.

Only four families huh? How many members did each family have? And I'm sure during that time Eves were popping and their families dying out every hour, and that's just for the ones who survived long enough to start a family. The eve starting zone probably moved another 1000k or more to the west, until you finally got one stable family out of it. And how many players did the server have? About 50? This constant "restart" feeling is why there are few people (also, they get bored and decide to play a psychopath murderer a few times before they quit). This might not be happening if there were 200 people online, but there are not that many, and this Eve triggering that happens only snowballs and makes matters worse. The mechanics need to be adjusted so the game doesn't keep spreading us out when we are already few in number and already ridiculously spread out. How about we try to get some of these problems addressed so people actually want to stay and play instead of being a fanboi apologist. If you like playing on a server that doesn't have many players on then by all means, hop off the main server and go to one with nobody there.

Spoonwood · 2019-12-06 17:51:26

Punkypal wrote:

This constant "restart" feeling is why there are few people (also, they get bored and decide to play a psychopath murderer a few times before they quit).

During The Rift period there existed a short few hour window were Eves could spawn. After that, there would often exist a period of 60+ some hours as I recall where people were building up/maintaining towns already established. The Rift period had low player numbers. Numbers jumped the week immediately after Jason went back to a boundless map WITHOUT a sale happening before or after that. So, I doubt that such "restart" feeling affects all that many people if climbing the entire tech tree is possible or easy enough. Also, new players, don't tend to know about things constantly restarting.

Punkypal wrote:

How about we try to get some of these problems addressed so people actually want to stay and play instead of being a fanboi apologist.

I had said something which was criticism of the update above. Specifically, the Tarr monument consists of dead content (on bs2), because of the zigzag mechanic (not because of the world being boundless... thus I criticized the zizag mechanics as it currently stands, not having a boundless world). And I thought you saw my writing there. So, I find it very strange that you imply me as some sort of fanboi apologist. I don't think you would think that I am such a thing if you had read through many of my other comments and posts.

Also, with respect to Eve spawning mechanics, there's a few notes about him addressing how it works in live-dev-changes here: https://discordapp.com/channels/3282153 … 2783836161 I think those changes have to wait for the update to take effect.

ollj · 2019-12-18 08:50:17

game is playable again.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-11-08 22:36:03

Update: Boundless World

#2 2019-11-08 22:47:36

Re: Update: Boundless World

#3 2019-11-08 22:48:46

Re: Update: Boundless World

#4 2019-11-08 22:53:36

Re: Update: Boundless World

#5 2019-11-09 01:00:31

Re: Update: Boundless World

#6 2019-11-09 01:03:09

Re: Update: Boundless World

#7 2019-11-09 01:17:17

Re: Update: Boundless World

#8 2019-11-09 03:24:08

Re: Update: Boundless World

#9 2019-11-09 10:11:42

Re: Update: Boundless World

#10 2019-11-09 11:30:46

Re: Update: Boundless World

#11 2019-11-09 14:48:40

Re: Update: Boundless World

#12 2019-11-09 21:17:45

Re: Update: Boundless World

#13 2019-11-10 02:26:26

Re: Update: Boundless World

#14 2019-11-18 03:58:33

Re: Update: Boundless World

#15 2019-12-04 09:50:45

Re: Update: Boundless World

#16 2019-12-04 16:44:38

Re: Update: Boundless World

#17 2019-12-04 17:53:36

Re: Update: Boundless World

#18 2019-12-06 14:47:38

Re: Update: Boundless World

#19 2019-12-06 17:51:26

Re: Update: Boundless World

#20 2019-12-18 08:50:17

Re: Update: Boundless World

Board footer