Problem: Eve Spiral's westward march ruins the game

jcwilk · 2020-01-06 22:17:37

The core of this issue is that after about a week the eve spiral has moved west by 10k which starts to become too far to migrate a family in one life even under ideal conditions. Below are the side effects of that in more detail.

(side note that I'm, for the most part aside from a quick note, ignoring the apocalypse in this post, for the point of discussion lets keep it about the case where apoc has been averted... ie, the best case scenario for civ building. If the best case doesn't work then the system clearly needs to be fixed)

It becomes impossible for new families to reach existing bell towers

The whole point of bell towers is to be a beacon for families to migrate to, right? When a bell tower is over 10k not only does no one want to spend a full hour running, but even if they did they wouldn't make it there in time to still be fertile. As it gets further and further, as it invariably will, it goes from an obnoxious, unfun, repetitive challenge to completely unreachable by any means.

Basically, when you build a town you have only at most a week for more families to join it and then you're stuck with what you've got completely isolated from all other online play aside from those that are born directly into the town.

As each existing family dies out they will never be replaced

Griefing and planning clumsiness can be a real obstacle for keeping a town alive, but normally it's a two steps back one step forward kind of thing... Failure can be recovered from, there are ups and down, ebbs and flows to a city as it flourishes and falls into pestilence. When a town becomes 100% cut off from any new blood then it only moves downwards. It's unreasonable to expect vets to protect a town 24/7, players need to sleep and work and spend time with families - Jason I'm sure you understand that. A town dying out should be a reversible problem, but instead after the week has passed and they've been cut off it turns into this weird type of sudden death mode where a single mistake will destroy the town forever.

Ancient civilizations can never and will never be stumbled upon

What's more exciting in a civilization building game than stumbling into a town that was built a month, a year, or even years ago? Imagine reading through all the notes and trying to figure out what life was like then. Imagine doing it as a new player who's completely unfamiliar with prior game dynamics and wondering about what it was like here, what killed the town eventually, or perhaps who killed the town. With the current eve spiral this is an impossibility, it will never even once happen. After towns get buried under a week of eve spiraling they are gone for good, never to be lived in by anyone under any circumstances, or at least certainly after 2 weeks it will never even be glimpsed. Month old or year old towns are pure fiction. Why? This is such a waste, there are loads of interestingly designed and horrifyingly designed towns that are only unreachable specifically because of the eve spiral.

The code for the eve spiral is currently completely broken

Due to a bug in the assumptions of how the eve spiral works, it's currently degraded into a single linear path northwards, much faster than normal (it likely leaves towns in the dust every day or every couple days now rather than every week), as described here https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … 668#p85668 and clearly needs to be fixed. Why not take this as an opportunity to throw away the code entirely and rewrite the eve spiral?

So this begs the question of what should it be replaced by to solve these issues? I know Jason doesn't like specific fixes to be recommended, so instead I'll present some ideals followed by a simple example of something that might fit those ideals (as an example, not as a specific solution I'm pushing):

Eve spawns should not be deterministic

The whole point of the eve spiral is to keep things spicy and interesting right? A square wave that makes the same spawning shape in the same general direction endlessly is not spicy and interesting. It does not lead to new unique lives. It does not add any mystery, only tedium. With non-deterministic spawns then even experienced players will be out of their element and trying to get their bearings for at least the first portion of their eve lives, if not the whole life. We'll be forced to decide between investing our time and attention into our new micro-civilization vs finding out where everyone else is and working towards establishing a connection. That's an interesting dynamic, getting our rough position for free is not.

I'd recommend taking a very hard look at normal distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution this type of distribution would be a great foundation for spawning people close together while still having the occasional outlier that spawns in an unexpected area. The typical spawn will have an easy enough time of finding other people but occasionally, someone will find themselves deep in the wilderness and have the option of establishing a far off outpost and trying to entice others to join them or making the long migration back to civilization.

Eve spawns should not regularly spawn people more than Xkm from spawns happening Y days ago

I left variable in place because I don't want to impose these arbitrary values, my point is that -some- arbitrary line should be drawn here about how long it takes for things to get far away, if they do get far away, and design the system to support that. Perhaps we should think about many different Y values, eg:

Do not spawn more than 5km from spawns 2 days ago
Do not spawn more than 10km from spawns 1 month ago
Do not spawn more than 20km from spawns 1 year ago

These are just examples to give you an idea of what I mean. Currently there's a linear relationship between X and Y but I believe it should be exponential or something much faster than linear. (as in, time scales faster than distance)

Eve spawns should utilize the full 2D plane

When the spawns march endlessly in one direction it really gives the game a one dimensional feel. Everyone talks about either going west or east, nobody cares about going north or south because it has no effect, it just makes it difficult to connect to everyone else... Which is slightly interesting if there was a point to that but there isn't, and even with a different eve spiral one could still strike out away from the "center" wherever or however that may be. If the eve spiral moved across both axes in both directions there would be far more area to disperse people across and it would give the world a more rich and complex feel rather than just the "newer" direction and the "older" direction. That's boring.

The actual "spiral" which is why we call the current (prior to this update) eve square wave the "eve spiral" did this but it failed the non-deterministic aspect which made it still repetitive and boring, and pointlessly and consistently far away from people on the other side of the circle.

Eve spawns should be, at least most of the time, not directly on top of each other

I think this one speaks for itself. Although one would think that using deterministic eve spirals would solve this, it's not really true because we know roughly where the eve spiral is going so we can just strike off in that direction and start a city up ahead and know that the eve spiral will eventually reach us and be spawning eves right on top of us. Aside from that situation though, the existing system mostly solves this issue so we should be thinking about different, less rigid ways to solve it.

So what's a possible solution?

The drunken dart player

Normal distribution can roughly be used to describe the placement of darts on a dartboard when aiming at the bullseye given an imperfect (ie human) player. The angle that the dart offset from the center takes is generally random (0-360) and the distance from the center generally follows the normal distribution bell curve. As one gets more and more inebriated the distribution gets spread out more and more and they become more likely to take out a window with a stray dart or at least leave holes in the wall.

This would actually be a great system for spawning eves IMO. As the system starts it will be a somewhat tight bellcurve coming out from the center at random angles, then as more and more spawns have happened that can be scaled outwards so that 95% of the time people spawn within 1km from the center, 5km, 10km, etc. Eventually after a very long time people will be thrown all over the map, but by then there will be all kinds of interesting past civilizations to explore.

A nice side effect of this is that it would give the apocalypse meaning, after everything was destroyed the range of randomness would be reset back to a tight cluster so it would be easy to find people again, easy to get to the center, etc... Everything built at the beginning in the center will be forever semi-reachable as people get more and more spread out.

Anyways, just an example solution... Please focus more on the ideals and I'd appreciate any discussion on any of the above from the community and hopefully from Jason. I very much believe that the current implementation, even when it's functioning as intended, is deeply game breaking and limits the higher level potential of the game.

Last edited by jcwilk (2020-01-06 22:18:26)

Spoonwood · 2020-01-07 00:00:55

jcwilk wrote:

The whole point of the eve spiral is to keep things spicy and interesting right? A square wave that makes the same spawning shape in the same general direction endlessly is not spicy and interesting. It does not lead to new unique lives. It does not add any mystery, only tedium. With non-deterministic spawns then even experienced players will be out of their element and trying to get their bearings for at least the first portion of their eve lives, if not the whole life. We'll be forced to decide between investing our time and attention into our new micro-civilization vs finding out where everyone else is and working towards establishing a connection. That's an interesting dynamic, getting our rough position for free is not.

How would trading be possible if non-deterministic spawning were again the case? I don't disagree with you, but at least to me, inter-town interaction becomes moot if finding them becomes all too difficult. Maybe such randomness though is more interesting than trading though especially if trading requires long periods of a lack of interpersonal interaction, so your idea could be better.

Alright... you tried to answer that with the normal distribution. But, would the normal distribution lead to areas barren of resources as I heard happened in the few weeks after The Come Together Disaster, and before the main changes got reversed?

jcwilk wrote:

The actual "spiral" which is why we call the current (prior to this update) eve square wave the "eve spiral" did this but it failed the non-deterministic aspect which made it still repetitive and boring, and pointlessly and consistently far away from people on the other side of the circle.

This isn't much information, so I might be working with a small data set. But, on the pre-wipe server12 I remember once spawning literally inside of Frost's city walls. After that I spawned in some prairie which was left of Frost's town. Another time I remember spawning even further left than that more towards what was the part of the road that connected North Town and South Town. After the temperature overhaul I spawned fairly far right of Frost's town and others had spawned there also. Additionally, and perhaps more tellingly all towns somehow seemed to end up right of the original North Town, and my recollection is that LostScholar said on stream once that spawn's were going right.

But, I also spawned left of Hearts Kingdom on server7 also.

Another time I played on server4 and spawned inside of some players' castle who didn't want other players.

I think a problem with the normal distribution idea comes as that outliers end up as one race towns. It might work without race restrictions though.

Kinrany · 2020-01-07 01:06:56

The spawn pattern was designed with the assumption that Eves will start new villages more or less near their spawn. This assumption is false because families have to find each other. The goal of spreading out villages in a sensible way is not being reached.

I still think there's a fundamental problem: the conflict between parenting and civilization building. They're different, and everyone prefers civilization building.

Repopulating towns with Eves is a cludge. I wish we had exactly one family per town. We don't have enough players for that though: any town would sooner or later die out due to low player population. So spawning adults is still necessary once everyone is dead.

jcwilk · 2020-01-07 01:20:48

Spoonwood wrote:

How would trading be possible if non-deterministic spawning were again the case? I don't disagree with you, but at least to me, inter-town interaction becomes moot if finding them becomes all too difficult. Maybe such randomness though is more interesting than trading though especially if trading requires long periods of a lack of interpersonal interaction, so your idea could be better.

There are more things than the eve spiral that are broken about the game right now which need to be fixed prior to trade being a realplay dynamic, however, I agree that the eve spiral is certainly a pivotal variable in the equation. It's important to keep in mind that eve placement is not the same as town placement, and certainly not the same as bell town placement. Bell towers are by far the most important mechanism in the game right now and would help to organize the game in a non-deterministic world. You'd spawn, eventually you'd hear one or more bells, then depending on how experienced you are you'd either have a rough idea of where civilization is or you'd have a fairly precise pin of where you are in the world. Then you'd get to choose whether you want to start moving your family towards civilization or make this a new outpost that can get new resources. I'd love to see some rare biomes that have rare resources, a reason for far away outposts to exist, but let's assume that in the future some value to far outposts is a thing... I think that's a fair assumption. Anyways there's a lot going on with all the factors at play, but I think we want the eve spiral to be a feature that opens possibilities rather than limits them as the current one does.

Spoonwood wrote:

Alright... you tried to answer that with the normal distribution. But, would the normal distribution lead to areas barren of resources as I heard happened in the few weeks after The Come Together Disaster, and before the main changes got reversed?

No, my suggestion included a gradually scaling up dispersal, the "increased inebriation" of the drunken dart player. Yes the center of the map would be pretty worked over but it would become less and less likely to spawn near the center as non-apoc time progressed. It could be designed to have the top of the bell curve be a "ring" that slowly grows outwards to avoid overconcentrating in the "bullseye". There's countless tweaks that can be done, that's the value of using simple math to spread things out over an area rather than complex rigid square wave structures which are very awkward to adjust.

Spoonwood wrote:

This isn't much information, so I might be working with a small data set. But, on the pre-wipe server12 I remember once spawning literally inside of Frost's city walls. After that I spawned in some prairie which was left of Frost's town. Another time I remember spawning even further left than that more towards what was the part of the road that connected North Town and South Town. After the temperature overhaul I spawned fairly far right of Frost's town and others had spawned there also. Additionally, and perhaps more tellingly all towns somehow seemed to end up right of the original North Town, and my recollection is that LostScholar said on stream once that spawn's were going right.
But, I also spawned left of Hearts Kingdom on server7 also.
Another time I played on server4 and spawned inside of some players' castle who didn't want other players.

Yeah, the chance of spawning inside a town is definitely a pitfall of nondeterminism, however as I illustrated this is still a risk with determinism, perhaps even more of a risk, since players can anticipate where the eve spiral will be and get ahead of it. "running west" in the current system is basically all you have to do for a pretty big chance of an eve spawning in or near your town within the next few days.

Hypothetically, additional rules could be added to veto the random pick and "reroll" if the chosen spot is too close to human built things. I didn't want to get into this much detail though as my suggested solution is just an example.

Spoonwood wrote:

I think a problem with the normal distribution idea comes as that outliers end up as one race towns. It might work without race restrictions though.

Personally I think this is fine, not all families require other families... Some are content with staying low tech nomads. The uncertainty of whether another family is near you strengthens the race spec update tbh... The nice thing about this suggestion is that not only is it possible that other races have spawned near you, but it's possible that they -will- spawn near you in the future, unlike with our current system (unless you run west ahead of it, and even then you'd only get one wave of spawns). So it could be completely viable to solve that problem by building a bell, and then over the course of the next few days/weeks as eves spawn vaguely near you they may be compelled to come visit, rather than eves spawning further and further away deterministically.

Last edited by jcwilk (2020-01-07 01:37:48)

Spoonwood · 2020-01-07 01:55:27

Kinrany wrote:

I still think there's a fundamental problem: the conflict between parenting and civilization building. They're different, and everyone prefers civilization building.

I do think that conflict makes for a problem also.

Spoonwood · 2020-01-07 02:07:43

jcwilk wrote:

Personally I think this is fine, not all families require other families... Some are content with staying low tech nomads.

I don't think that will work. Here's why:

jasonrohrer wrote:

"If we had to start over from scratch, but kept all of our knowledge, how long would it take us to get back to iPhones?" where iPhones are a placeholder for whatever sufficiently advanced tech we can imagine.
But that thought experiment involves survival too, which is one of the things that would slow us down. We have to eat, and keep warm, and fend off natural threats, and have babies to keep the civilization going. Obviously, we wouldn't get back to iPhones in one generation. It would take hundreds of years. Might it take thousands of years? Might it take longer the second time around than the first? Maybe the knowledge doesn't help. Maybe it was all about bootstrapping infrastructure. Might we never get there the second time around? Maybe we'd lose the thread. Maybe all the "right place at the right time" moments wouldn't play out the same way. Maybe retreading the same ground is impossible.
The world is the imaginary space inside which this thought experiment plays out:
"If we had to start over from scratch, but kept all of our knowledge, how long would it take us to get back to iPhones?" where iPhones are a placeholder for whatever sufficiently advanced tech we can imagine.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8576

Thus, I would think the game would intentionally come as designed that in principle it's possible for every family to get to a high-tech point at some point in time.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-01-07 02:08:29)

jcwilk · 2020-01-07 02:14:25

Spoonwood wrote:

jcwilk wrote:
Personally I think this is fine, not all families require other families... Some are content with staying low tech nomads.
I don't think that will work. Here's why:
jasonrohrer wrote:
"If we had to start over from scratch, but kept all of our knowledge, how long would it take us to get back to iPhones?" where iPhones are a placeholder for whatever sufficiently advanced tech we can imagine.
But that thought experiment involves survival too, which is one of the things that would slow us down. We have to eat, and keep warm, and fend off natural threats, and have babies to keep the civilization going. Obviously, we wouldn't get back to iPhones in one generation. It would take hundreds of years. Might it take thousands of years? Might it take longer the second time around than the first? Maybe the knowledge doesn't help. Maybe it was all about bootstrapping infrastructure. Might we never get there the second time around? Maybe we'd lose the thread. Maybe all the "right place at the right time" moments wouldn't play out the same way. Maybe retreading the same ground is impossible.
The world is the imaginary space inside which this thought experiment plays out:
"If we had to start over from scratch, but kept all of our knowledge, how long would it take us to get back to iPhones?" where iPhones are a placeholder for whatever sufficiently advanced tech we can imagine.
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8576
Thus, I would think the game would intentionally come as designed that in principle it's possible for every family to get to a high-tech point at some point in time.

There is a huge, flawed logical leap from "it is possible to get to iPhones" to "every family will be able to get to iPhones for sure"

Spoonwood · 2020-01-07 02:27:29

jcwilk wrote:

There is a huge, flawed logical leap from "it is possible to get to iPhones" to "every family will be able to get to iPhones for sure"

The word 'is' refers to being, and thus refers to the greatest of possibilities, and the greatest of certaintites. Possibility and being able to do something don't differ in meaning. Thus, the meaning of the two sentences does not differ.

Of course, that doesn't mean that every family would. Just that such would be possible for every family. If it's not possible for every family, then the statement 'it is possible to get to iPhones' is not correct, and would at best end up as something like 'it might possible if you're privileged or advantaged to get to iPhones'. It would also turn the game into significantly a matter of luck *intentionally* instead of a matter of one of skill of a group.

jcwilk · 2020-01-07 02:32:16

Spoonwood wrote:

jcwilk wrote:
There is a huge, flawed logical leap from "it is possible to get to iPhones" to "every family will be able to get to iPhones for sure"
The word 'is' refers to being, and thus refers to the greatest of possibilities, and the greatest of certaintites. Possibility and being able to do something don't differ in meaning. Thus, the meaning of the two sentences does not differ.
Of course, that doesn't mean that every family would. Just that such would be possible for every family. If it's not possible for every family, then the statement 'it is possible to get to iPhones' is not correct, and would at best end up as something like 'it might possible if you're privileged or advantaged to get to iPhones'. It would also turn the game into significantly a matter of luck *intentionally* instead of a matter of one of skill of a group.

Bro, you really need to realize your inability to see shades of gray. I mean that in the sincerest, least condescending way possible as it's constantly an issue when debating with you. The most literal black and white interpretation of a vague statement is very rarely the intended meaning. Off the cuff high level brief statements are not contractual legalese.

Punkypal · 2020-01-10 14:51:30

Considering Jason called the Eve spawn pattern a "spiral" I honestly don't know why he doesn't do an actual spiral! He could still have his set pattern, but go clockwise (or counter) around and around, moving out a little further with each complete revolution. If the arc isn't reset they could start over at the center once they get more than 10k from the center. With a 10k radius, that would still allow for towns to be at the extreme over 20k apart, but that would be the max, and with roads and horses/cars/planes that distance could be traveled in one life, but that's still so much space. 20k x 20k square? More than enough room and areas will become ghost towns, not get visited, and be reset every week (leaving only roads or ancient walls I believe).

Why can't that be a thing? Seems straight forward enough.

Spoonwood · 2020-01-10 16:23:43

Punkypal wrote:

Considering Jason called the Eve spawn pattern a "spiral" ...

When was that? Jason says 'zigzag pattern' here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8344

jasonrohrer wrote:

Eves are placed in a zigzag pattern spreading out to the west, which looks like this

A few days before that he said:

jasonrohrer wrote:

A persistent Eve "moving grid" pattern, like this

DestinyCall · 2020-01-10 16:26:07

We used to have an Eve spiral which worked like that. I prefer it to the current Eve highway. Something needs to change to allow families to find each other, as long as race specialization is part of the game.

We can't survive without rubber and oil.

testo · 2020-01-10 16:41:45

DestinyCall wrote:

We used to have an Eve spiral which worked like that. I prefer it to the current Eve highway. Something needs to change to allow families to find each other, as long as race specialization is part of the game.
We can't survive without rubber and oil.

Make no mistake, this is the secret way we are supposed to ask for the rift back and see how amazingly good it was to be in a cage.

DestinyCall · 2020-01-10 17:13:55

I would not be surprised if that was the evil plan. Like when we didn't appreciate property fences, so we got the gift of war swords.

Cantface · 2020-01-10 17:55:48

Town progression sure has struggled since race restrictions and I don't think it's an accident that the tech tree is harder to climb either. Weird priorities making the game harder than it already was. Do ppl that like strat survival games just love the punishment and the slow slog to maybe victory? If it gets any harder plebs like me won't be able to play and I'm sure I'm not the only one lol.

DestinyCall · 2020-01-10 18:42:24

I can't speak for everyone, but I find it much less enjoyable to know that the majority of the towns I'm born into are going to eventually stall out and die because the game expects us to trade with non-existent families. The current state of the game is very hard to deal with, even as an experienced player and active forum member. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for someone who has recently started playing OHOL. Assuming you make it passed the initial steep learning curve and like the game enough to stick with it, eventually you will need something from the desert/jungle/tundra. Only to discover that in some lives you can't touch anything in the jungle/desert because it is too hot and the tundra is too cold. No matter how much protection you wear, you still can't pick up anything.

You keep trying and eventually, you manage to get into the jungle and harvest latex for rubber ... but now you need sulfur. And sulfur means going into the desert and for some reason, the desert is still too hot to enter. You ask other people for help, and they tell you to ask a black person. But there are no black people in your village. You ask where to find black people and they tell you they live in other villages. So you go looking for a different village. Assuming you are lucky enough to find another village and it happens to have black people, you try to ask them for help. And that's when you discover the language barrier for the first time.

If you don't give up on the game at that point, you are a stronger person than I am. Or you really enjoy hitting your head against a brick wall. I can't even bring myself to writing a tutorial for "how to make kerosene" in the current game state, because it involves coordinating the actions of three different races across multiple lives. It sounds ridiculous to write it all down, since actually doing it in game basically requires a huge amount of luck.

Punkypal · 2020-01-10 20:23:36

Spoonwood wrote:

Punkypal wrote:
Considering Jason called the Eve spawn pattern a "spiral" ...
When was that? Jason says 'zigzag pattern' here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8344
jasonrohrer wrote:
Eves are placed in a zigzag pattern spreading out to the west, which looks like this
A few days before that he said:
jasonrohrer wrote:
A persistent Eve "moving grid" pattern, like this

I stand corrected. When he has said spiral is was in reference to previous spawning methods. I still think an actual spiral would be a better design than a westward highway

jcwilk · 2020-01-10 21:25:04

Punkypal wrote:

Spoonwood wrote:
Punkypal wrote:
Considering Jason called the Eve spawn pattern a "spiral" ...
When was that? Jason says 'zigzag pattern' here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8344
jasonrohrer wrote:
Eves are placed in a zigzag pattern spreading out to the west, which looks like this
A few days before that he said:
jasonrohrer wrote:
A persistent Eve "moving grid" pattern, like this
I stand corrected. When he has said spiral is was in reference to previous spawning methods. I still think an actual spiral would be a better design than a westward highway

Yes, an actual spiral would be an improvement over the current westward square wave but I don't see why we would go with a deterministic pattern when we could be spawned in a statistically controlled random field.

It -should- be confusing as hell where we are when we come into the world, we shouldn't be able to derive where we are based on out-of-band knowledge of where the last 6 spawns were that just seems incredibly ridiculous. There -should- be a chance of spawning near an ancient city, or way the hell deep in the wilderness so that an epic journey back towards the center is necessary (rather than an ever escalating distance for everyone that goes from difficult to impossible and never reverses) variety is just so woefully lacking in any deterministic system.

We have bell towers to help us find each other already, the struggle of advancing a town long enough to finish a bell tower is one of the few bits of metagame that actually functions in ohol.

But thank you all for keeping the topic active, so far he has completely ignored the issue so let's keep nagging him until he acknowledges it's an issue that must be fixed because I simply can't see how this game can work with the current system. Everything is fleeting and meaningless with the westward march, and that sucks because the game has so much wasted potential that I'm sure we'd all love to see come together

Spoonwood · 2020-01-10 21:30:00

DestinyCall wrote:

Only to discover that in some lives you can't touch anything in the jungle/desert because it is too hot and the tundra is too cold. No matter how much protection you wear, you still can't pick up anything.

There's a recent video by Twisted where a lady who wants to make a car says that in order to do an oil rig in a tundra she can just use warmer clothing. Her sense of physics wasn't wrong. But, even semi-realistic temperature physics got jettisoned a long time ago when the temperature overhaul happened.

Then again, if we had the dynamic temperature system we had last January, with the current biome layout and still hot jungles, would people settle along desert/badland boundaries or jungle/badland boundaries?

If people did, bear and wolf hunting would go up even more as a priority.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-01-10 21:38:16)

DestinyCall · 2020-01-10 23:28:46

jcwilk wrote:

Yes, an actual spiral would be an improvement over the current westward square wave but I don't see why we would go with a deterministic pattern when we could be spawned in a statistically controlled random field.
It -should- be confusing as hell where we are when we come into the world, we shouldn't be able to derive where we are based on out-of-band knowledge of where the last 6 spawns were that just seems incredibly ridiculous. There -should- be a chance of spawning near an ancient city, or way the hell deep in the wilderness so that an epic journey back towards the center is necessary (rather than an ever escalating distance for everyone that goes from difficult to impossible and never reverses) variety is just so woefully lacking in any deterministic system.
We have bell towers to help us find each other already, the struggle of advancing a town long enough to finish a bell tower is one of the few bits of metagame that actually functions in ohol.
But thank you all for keeping the topic active, so far he has completely ignored the issue so let's keep nagging him until he acknowledges it's an issue that must be fixed because I simply can't see how this game can work with the current system. Everything is fleeting and meaningless with the westward march, and that sucks because the game has so much wasted potential that I'm sure we'd all love to see come together

To understand the Eve Highway, I think it is important to look back at where the game was when this spawn algorithm was originally implemented.

Before the Rift, we had Eve spirals and clusters and various other spawn algorithms. During the Rift, Eves were scattered around the box. The Eve highway was implemented immediately after the wall came down, in the same update that released us back into the open world. From reading over Jason's post, I get the impression that he was aiming for a compromise between old and new. Remember, this was right after the "Rift experiment." Many people did not want to spawn close to established towns as Eves. They wanted to be in virgin wilderness again, living in isolated early villages, and maybe encounter another village or developing town as they explored around their town later on. I think Jason wanted to allow Eves to spawn in fresh, untouched areas, away from current development, while allowing players the ability to seek out older towns and ruins by heading back into the previously settled parts of the infinite map. Newer families would get a fresh start, but old towns would be allowed to develop for as long as players were willing to keep them going. The linear nature of the spawn pattern provided orientation, sort of similar to the Rift walls. You could easily navigate to look for new territory or established/dead villages.

Keep in mind - one key change compared with the pre-Rift world is reduced culling. Once an area becomes depleted by longterm settlement, it will not recover, even if the area is long abandoned. So occupied territory will inevitably get "used up" and cluttered with signs of human occupation. However, this also means that you could theoretically return to an old town to repopulate it days after it was abandoned as long as the area remains active, due to a network of roads or nearby villages with maps to lead people back to the dead town.

He also envisioned players traversing great distances using planes, perhaps to repopulate old towns or connect distant active settlements together. Of course, this update was before race restrictions made planes effectively unobtainable for isolated villages and staying in one spot for longer than one day nearly impossible.

Here is the original post:

jasonrohrer wrote:

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:
https://i.imgur.com/48HSIcX.png
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.

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8344

After reading Jason's vision for the Eve Highway, what strikes me first is that this algorithm was developed for a world without race restrictions. A world where finding and connecting with other villages could be accomplished by riding horses and flying planes. A world where living in an isolated village didn't cut you off from reaching higher tech and doom your town to a slow death by dehydration. I really miss that world.

It also occurs to me that the basic idea behind this spawn pattern isn't terrible. But pace of westward progression is far too rapid. This suggests to me that too many Eves are failing to establish towns (which pushes the next Eve spawn deeper and deeper into the wilds) or that the distance between spawns is too great so even if the Eves are as successful as they should be, they end up too spread out. I think racial restrictions are also partially responsible for this problem because it cuts off many towns from horses or planes for long distance travel, bell towers for long distance beacons and oil for longterm water supply. This means many towns lack the necessary tools to thrive independently OR hunt for other towns efficiently.

Ideally, we need other towns to be close enough to reach on foot. This could be achieved by slowing down the death march or by resetting the start point or reversing the direction each week or any number of other tweaks.

Personally, I like a cluster idea. Pick a random point and have Eves spawn in a cluster around that point each day. The next day, the cluster moves in a random direction and new Eves begin to spawn in brand new territory. A new town will always have other new towns relatively close by in a random scatter and old towns will eventually need to find more distant towns if their neighbors have all died out. The cluster target could even move in a spiral or large circle that takes roughly one or two weeks to complete. If the culling is set correctly, the oldest unused areas could reset before the Eves return to repopulate the area, while the most active zones could potentially survive the culling and be revisited by lucky Eves.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-01-11 00:11:59)

Spoonwood · 2020-01-11 00:10:14

jasonrohrer wrote:

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.

I don't know of anyone saying that the plane has been useful since race restrictions have existed.

Has a single plane gotten used on bigserver2 since race restrictions have existed? If one did get used, what was it's used for?

DestinyCall wrote:

A world where living in an isolated village didn't cut you off from reaching higher tech and doom your town to a slow death by dehydration.

Perhaps I'll misunderstand what you asserted with the last sentence. But, oil rigs depleted the update before The Rift existed: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7286 I don't think that every changed.

DestinyCall · 2020-01-11 00:15:08

I am aware that oil delays water depletion rather than solving it completely. But without access to oil tech, you hit the water limit before anything else is in any danger of running out. And you can't get oil as an isolated village with race restrictions, which was the point I was trying to make.

I'm sure you have heard this before, but you tend to take things far too literally. It must get frustrating sometimes. You remind me of my younger brother. He is very logical and literal-minded. He is a good kid, great at math, but tends to struggle in social settings. People tend to be a lot more random than numbers.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-01-11 02:42:58)

Kinrany · 2020-01-11 05:26:25

Another problem is that there are more Eves than there are players for populating towns.

Maybe the server should only spawn Eves when there are not enough towns for the current player count.

DestinyCall · 2020-01-11 08:05:18

Theoretically, eve spawns are already a rare event and only occur when they are needed, based on "when there are too few families or too many babies for the existing mothers to handle."

jcwilk · 2020-01-11 08:37:15

DestinyCall wrote:

Personally, I like a cluster idea. Pick a random point and have Eves spawn in a cluster around that point each day. The next day, the cluster moves in a random direction and new Eves begin to spawn in brand new territory. A new town will always have other new towns relatively close by in a random scatter and old towns will eventually need to find more distant towns if their neighbors have all died out. The cluster target could even move in a spiral or large circle that takes roughly one or two weeks to complete. If the culling is set correctly, the oldest unused areas could reset before the Eves return to repopulate the area, while the most active zones could potentially survive the culling and be revisited by lucky Eves.

I don't mind the cluster idea you're describing, the nice thing about the cluster center moving in a random direction over time is that it would, on average, not go in any direction so while it may veer away it's not going to gallop off endlessly. Plus it's a nice mix of keeping folks not impossibly apart yet still nondeterministic. I guess I'd hope the random field around the cluster center would have a pretty wide radius, maybe with unbounded normal distribution.

Downside with that is that it would likely retrace its own steps frequently which is why I was wondering about maybe having an expanding radius over time. A nice thing about them getting further and further away from the center is that it makes the apoc more and more difficult to prevent, in which case it would reset and become very difficult again. Maybe the radius should grow in a slowing manner so that the total area is increasing by the same amount each day? I dunno lots of interesting possibilities.

I suppose your cluster suggestion could be combined with my ever expanding thing, like maybe the amount the center moves each day and maybe the radius from the center could both be gradually increasing until apoc and then reset to be small again... Kind of like the world is becoming more and more unstable the longer it lasts. Maybe something like the "pyre" from that other thread could be used to reduce or start to reverse that process. Maybe some kind of continuous tug o war could be "fought" via monument construction where if chaos wins the world gets reset, if order wins... I don't know, maybe a map of the world gets released or something like that

Not crazy about the second part with the spiral or circle or whatever and aggressive culling though, that goes against the whole ancient civilization thing and it seems like it would end up being about the same as it is currently except that villages which are able to last through the cycle suddenly get reconnected with new eves for a short amount of time and then they're gone again... It just seems like a weird and unnecessary cycle, I'd rather have eves randomly and occasionally but continuously finding their way to the town rather than keeping track of some spiral via some completely out-of-band mechanism to know what "season" it is in the eve circular cycle

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