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#301 Re: Main Forum » Locations of exhausted mines » 2020-03-31 18:40:35

Also, the diesel mine (and town that goes with it) has been abandoned, and the diesel engine has been taken.

#302 Main Forum » Locations of exhausted mines » 2020-03-31 18:14:43

jasonrohrer
Replies: 4

Here's where the shallow mines have become exhausted since the reset yesterday:

(-280,0)  || Mon Mar 30 23:34:00 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(200,-400)  || Mon Mar 30 23:39:25 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-280,-360)  || Mon Mar 30 23:49:43 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-760,-200)  || Mon Mar 30 23:57:54 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(5400320,560)  || Tue Mar 31 00:14:08 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-880,-640)  || Tue Mar 31 02:46:09 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 03:18:08 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-760,0)  || Tue Mar 31 03:27:29 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-40,0)  || Tue Mar 31 05:03:44 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-20880,-20200)  || Tue Mar 31 09:11:53 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-800,0)  || Tue Mar 31 12:54:39 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-1200,-440)  || Tue Mar 31 13:26:34 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  
(-1120,40)  || Tue Mar 31 14:09:57 UTC 2020 ||  id=943  

Here's where the deep (stanchion) mines have been exhausted:

(-280,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 00:20:28 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-760,-200)  || Tue Mar 31 01:35:34 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-880,-640)  || Tue Mar 31 05:53:09 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:14:17 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-760,0)  || Tue Mar 31 12:26:38 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:35:29 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:38:18 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-1200,-440)  || Tue Mar 31 14:13:46 UTC 2020 ||  id=945  
(-1120,40)  || Tue Mar 31 15:23:44 UTC 2020 ||  id=945 

Note that (-160,-360) occurs several times.  That's because they are installing and removing a diesel engine to get more iron, as can be seen here:

(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:35:22 UTC 2020 ||  id=3130  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:35:35 UTC 2020 ||  id=3130  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:37:04 UTC 2020 ||  id=3130  
(-160,-360)  || Tue Mar 31 12:37:53 UTC 2020 ||  id=3130

So there's one operating diesel mine on the map, and about 5 deep pit mines that haven't been exhausted yet.

#303 Re: Main Forum » Remember that time that Jason starved us for an hour? » 2020-03-31 16:55:34

Yeah, I thought it might be that.... that's a bug!

Would be nicer if it was people's selfless humanity shining through, though.

#304 Re: Main Forum » Remember that time that Jason starved us for an hour? » 2020-03-31 16:37:07

This is because wild berry bushes don't respawn, right?

I've noticed an interesting custom, where people leave 1 berry left on each bush in the wild.

I guess this berry is left "for emergency use only."

#305 Re: Main Forum » Hotfix: iron pits no longer infinite » 2020-03-31 16:34:51

Legs, the expected iron from pre-diesel is 8 loose (first two stages), then 19 with pick (third stage) and then 46 with pick and stanchion. 

Onetech is still outdated.  Not sure what's going on there.

#306 Re: Main Forum » Iron changes and what I'd like to see. » 2020-03-31 16:29:14

There are some limitations to what animations can happen in a context like this, just based on the way that "character" vs "held object" animations are divided in the game.

Characters have 5 animations (walking, standing, being held, doing, and eating), and they are "part" of the character itself.


The way fishing works is that it is stuck in your hand and sets your speed to 0, preventing movement.  The pole itself has an animation, but the character is just standing there.

So for mining, the pick could have an animation (rocking, making a sound), but the character would just be standing there.  Would look pretty bad, I think.

The reason a held object can't specify an animation for the whole character is that the characters are all different.  They each have different sprites and parts etc.  Some have hair that swing when they walk, etc.



I'm also not at all interested in slowing you down by making you stand there and wait X seconds to do something.

Fishing works that way mostly because it's cute/funny, not because I want to slow down fishing.


But yeah, getting something different out of the mine with each whack could be a thing.

Not sure about having the proportions change over time (more iron early, more rocks later), because that seems like it would create a surplus of useless stuff later, as you bang away for the thin iron at the end.

#307 Main Forum » Hotfix: iron pits no longer infinite » 2020-03-30 21:38:39

jasonrohrer
Replies: 13

Funny story.

Due to all the consternation about the potential for cheap iron to run out too quickly, I doubled the amount of iron in the pit mines and stanchion mines (with the plan of lowering it later, after we got a feel for the new scarcity).


However, I forgot to double the number of uses for the "mine + extracted ore" states that go along with them.  When you hit the mine with the pick, it goes into this state, and then you grab the extracted ore, and it goes back to the other state.

Well, in the transition engine, use counts only work if the new object has the same number of uses as the old object.

But these "mine + ore" states had half as many uses, so the mines weren't getting used up.


That has been fixed now, and we can try again (yet again) on a fresh map.

#308 Re: Main Forum » Iron » 2020-03-30 21:33:45

This has been fixed.

#309 Re: Main Forum » Alternative game design instead of current restrictions » 2020-03-30 21:31:35

Interesting stuff!

A number of these things have been considered and discussed in the past.

The "rare items, but you know exactly where they are" is a good idea, and would solve the problem.  There is some implementation headache (like, what if they type /ORE instead of /IRON, or what if they don't know exactly what it's called---i.e., how do they tell you what they're looking for, when there are 75 natural items them might want to find?)  There's also a kinda weird realism issue (radar for iron, for oil, for clay?)  Anyway, in terms of solving the problem, things could actually run out locally.  Closest loose iron is 500 tiles away?  Maybe we should install that kero-powered mining rig instead of walking that far.

Not sure about the really huge biomes.  I've never been a fan of that suggestion, but I'm not 100% sure why.  I guess I feel like it would make walking around boring and tedious (how much farther do I need to go to get to the desert?)

When trying to do personal skill specialization, the idea of learning from others was definitely examined pretty closely.  There's a bootstrapping problem, of course, and a problem where people get "stuck" waiting for random-rolled inspiration to replace a forgotten skill.  Also, I can imagine it would be frustrating to KNOW how to do something, but not be able to.  Like, the player KNOWS how to use a bowdrill to make a fire, but they are born "dumb," and they have to find someone to demo it for them (which might be busy-work.... going through the motions demoing skills to people over and over each life).

With the tool slots, if they want to make fire, and know how, they can do it, and make it one of their chosen skills for that life.  There's nothing stopping them from doing any particular thing.  There's something stopping them from doing ALL things in the same life, though.

For the race restrictions, you might know how to get oil and not be able to this life.... but you still know how to get it.  You follow an expert way stone and go talk to a ginger.

#310 Main Forum » Hotfix Incoming » 2020-03-29 18:24:45

jasonrohrer
Replies: 2

Fixing the bug where a shallow well doesn't unearth more iron along the ley line.

Fixing the baby:mom ratio, to reduce babypocalypse after server restart (even a setting of max 3.0 bb per mom left some moms pretty overloaded last restart, turning it down to 2.0).

These "force eve" ratios are now live server settings, so I can tweak them in realtime in reaction to actually observing conditions on the ground.


There will be a map wipe to test both of these things for real.

#311 Re: Main Forum » Iron veins are not upgrading (and here's why) » 2020-03-29 18:12:43

Ooops, onetech is out-dated.  It is a problem with two +primaryHomeland tags in there.

#312 Re: Main Forum » Iron veins are not upgrading (and here's why) » 2020-03-29 18:10:15

Actually, doesn't look like +primaryHomeland is the actual problem here... looking in more detail.

#313 Re: Main Forum » Iron veins are not upgrading (and here's why) » 2020-03-29 18:08:30

I'm looking at it right now.


Oh, yeah.... I think the +primaryHomeland tag was on two things by accident, which prevents the second upgrade from happening.

Will fix and update servers today.


Before you unleash your rage upon me, remember that this is Sunday morning, my (only) day off, and my kids are waiting to spend time with me.


Software has bugs.

#314 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: mining changes » 2020-03-29 00:16:54

Bpscotch, yes, it means that if you dig another well elsewhere, it won't uncover new iron.

This isn't 100% settled, but that's the way it is for now.

Otherwise, folks would just run around placing wells to unlock free iron all over the map, and bring it all home.

I'm still looking for a better solution to prevent this and still allow expansion.

You CAN expand by taking an engine somewhere and making a mine.  But you can't expand by starting from scratch, unless you want to do it iron-free....


You CAN expand your water resources by digging outpost wells.  But I think it's less of a problem, because water is so quickly consumed and so bulky to transport.  You could also run around and get water from ponds all over the place, but people don't generally do that.

But one piece of iron?  That will make a tool that can be used dozens of times.  Iron is very dense.  You can haul 12 pieces in a regular cart.  That's enough for 12 tools, with hundreds of total tool uses.

Using buckets, a cart can only hold 40 water, which can be used to water 40 plants.

So people don't generally run around building low-tech wells just to bring cheap water home.  But they would definitely do that for cheap iron.


Anyway, we somehow need to differentiate a real "outpost village" from a "fake" one that is just used to bring free resources home.  One option is some way for people to "maintain" an outpost area over generations, but it's pretty fragile.  Like if you needed to go "dig some mud" on an outpost vein every 30 minutes for 3 hours.  Seems like a solo player might be able to pull that off over several lives, though, thus unlocking free iron without actually settling there.

#315 Re: Main Forum » Having some trouble with Steam today » 2020-03-29 00:07:26

This seems to have been resolved, eventually.  But it definitely wasn't so smooth.

Update process is almost done.

#316 Main Forum » Having some trouble with Steam today » 2020-03-28 22:52:38

jasonrohrer
Replies: 2

Not sure what's going on, but the first Steam build failed, and the backup build seems to be hanging when trying to log into Steam.

I'm guessing there's some kind of Steam outage today for posting builds.  Ugg...

Anyway, the result is that the whole update process is stalled, waiting for this to resolve.  Half the servers are down, waiting for the update to be pushed to Steam.

At some point, I'll have to manually intervene and push it to Steam some other way, but that's even more time consuming...

The automated method that I'm using has worked 97 weeks in a row....

#317 Re: News » Update: Family Mine » 2020-03-28 22:24:31

Yes, I am looking for ways to re-enable outposts and "fake eves" in the future.

#318 Re: News » Update: Family Mine » 2020-03-28 21:11:22

Yes, the idea is that you should care about your precious resources.

Not caring is boring.

#319 News » Update: Family Mine » 2020-03-28 21:03:27

jasonrohrer
Replies: 29

O5yhsfE.png

Each family now gets a few iron mine locations along the ley line of their first homeland well site.  These uncovered iron veins offer a bit of bare-hand iron ore, then more accessible with various increasing levels of mining tech (pick, then stanchion, and finally a diesel mine).  Finally, manual mining with tools has become hungry work.

The goal here is to make iron a more precious and carefully-managed resource, instead of one that is practically infinite as it is scattered randomly around a practically infinite map.  This also reduces the "wander around searching" gameplay pattern.

This is a huge change, because iron is something like the spine of the tech tree.  Some adjustments will been needed over the next few days and weeks.

Biome expert way stone frequency has been doubled, to further reduce wandering around searching.

Dangerous animals can no longer be warded off simply by standing on an occupied square---they now can attack as they pass over the square you are standing on, even if they don't land where you're standing.

Arrows now have a quiver, which allows you to reload the bow without setting anything down on the ground.  This will help you hunt those now-more-dangerous animals.

Babies have been changed to only consume food when starving.  In between full and starving, they refuse food.  This makes baby-mother communication a bit more necessary than it used to be.  I'm still working on this part of the game, but I'm trying to reduce the feeling that you might as well go AFK for a real-life snack break during the first three minutes of your life.  What you do when you're a baby should matter more than it does currently.

Touching a property gate will give you an arrow pointing you toward the closest owner.  No more locked mystery gates.

#321 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: mining changes » 2020-03-28 20:18:49

Well, Twisted, you at least inspired the idea.

Fug punched a hole in the initial version that I came up with (where you unlock more mines by founding more homelands), which led me to the version where there are a non-growing number of mines for family.

#322 Re: Main Forum » Dear Jason, please add this to go alone with the iron changes. » 2020-03-28 20:11:13

You mean take them apart, piece by piece, for recycling?

That's not going to make it in this week, but I could do that in the future.  Can you make a OneLifeData7 github issue to remind me?

#323 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: mining changes » 2020-03-28 19:36:28

Gogo:

You can put a property fence around your car or plane to make a "private garage" area to prevent theft.  Of course, at the end of your life, you need to pick someone who will keep the fence going and "inherit" your vehicle.

There used to be a problem with "cargo cult" landing strips that could be used to lure pilots and steal their planes.  That has been fixed.  You can read a map right before flying, and it will pick the landing strip closest to the destination of your map.

So you can fly to "trusted" landing strips only, and bring a map to return home (or make way stones near each runway pointing to the other runway).  And you can build a property fence near each runway, or even around it, to protect this whole setup and prevent your plane from being stolen.

Instant long-distance travel for 2 kero round-trip.


Anyway, you have the building blocks in hand for private and secure air travel.

#324 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: mining changes » 2020-03-28 19:31:01

Elsayal, I wasn't ignoring you.  Your response was a good one, though:  "Let's try it and see how it goes."

Twisted actually came up with this idea (that each family would have only a few mines to work with).  He doesn't like the idea anymore, or the way that I ended up implementing it.  But he and I have been discussing it for a while, which is why I was responding to him in detail.

Fug is particularly upset, I think, because he hasn't figured out a work-around that will let him get infinite free iron (yet).


Legs, resource scarcity has ALWAYS been a central theme.

Here's a post that was written in 2017, about 8 months before the game launched to the public off-Steam:

http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=63


Unfortunately, the game launched with infinite carrots...


There has always been plenty of angst when any previously-infinite resource gets tamped down, though.


And I hope it's clear to everyone why this is a perennial issue:

On an infinite map, "infinite" is the default quantity for every natural resource.

#325 Re: Main Forum » Coming soon: mining changes » 2020-03-28 18:58:45

Twisted, it it was a better game, there would be way more people playing it.

There are fundamental things that make it less "good" than other games (like the one-hour time commitment per game played, the fundamental lack of player progress from hour to hour, etc).  I can't fix those things without abandoning the fundamental premise of the game.

But there are other things that have nothing to do with the fundamental premise that are not good.  They make the game more boring and less interesting than it would be otherwise.

Infinite resources, in all their various forms, are one of those things.  There's nothing in the premise of the game that requires infinite resources.  Instead, "Everything Runs Out" was the mantra from the beginning:

http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=63

It has been a two-year process, going all the way back to the removal of infinite carrots.  But each time one of those things was fixed, after some massaging to get the balance right, the game became better.


You might currently say that water is finite for "most" towns, except for a few veteran players who can make a diesel engine and get oil.

And water is an even more fundamental resource than iron.

Yet somehow, it works.

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