One Hour One Life Forums

Since the rift times, I've come to realise my overall preference for a more compact playing field with emergent gameplay tension and genuine player interaction over the current infinite world, so big and vast that the costs of family interaction outweigh the benefits without forced mechanics. This, coupled with the community's undying distaste for some of the changes made after the rollback from the rift, has compelled me to share a wacky, far fetched idea I've had for quite some time that touches on the infinite / finite map dilemma, the constant march to the west, biome bands and the infamous family specialization.

Crude tectonic simulation: an infinite map with finite, ever moving pockets of land.

Why:

1. To help make the game more natural and dynamic, playing it on one day and later on the next should feel mostly similar, while playing it a week later would result in a complete different world and experience
2. To simulate resource scarcity and player competition in an infinite map without the use of forced mechanics
3. To create distinct regions that make use of the whole map and incentivize all around exploration, not just east-west and a couple hundred tiles north and south

What:

- A crude tectonic simulation that sections the map into thousands of "plates" bordered by rifts and mountain ranges
- Plates are always moving, sweeping away anything human-made close to the borders and expanding into new teritory

How:

- Upon generation, the map is sectioned into a multitude of "plates", randomly shaped regions that always border each other (like skin cells)
- Each plate is then assigned a direction to move towards
- Where plates colide, a mountain range is formed, while rifts open where they slide from, acting as borders and simulating the convergent and divergent boundaries of the real world
- Mountains erode with time and form again farther ahead while rifts expand and contract with the plates movement

Details:

- The border will move a set amount of tiles in a given direction per day, going through a two stage process: "Mountain + Time" -> "Eroded Mountain + Time" -> "Empty ground"
- Biome size should be slightly increased, stretching them farther apart and avoiding having all condensed in a single area
- Up to two families may inhabit the same plate
- Not all special biomes are guaranteed to be included in a single region
- Family specialty is disabled, every family can interact normally with every object in the game
- Biome bands are disabled, special biome generation is rolled back to cover the whole map
- Homelands are set back at family wells

Expectations:

- Early survival stays mostly the same but ramps up as resources become more and more scarce and the need for greater tech rises
- Competition for resources may eventually arise between two families stuck in the same plate, with the potential for trade, hoarding, stealing and war
- Towns are strategically built closer to mountain ranges, giving them a greater grace period before being swept by the border
- Planes become some of the most valuable tech, allowing families to travel to and from other plates, collecting resources unavailable in their home region, meeting and trading with others

Other:

- Eve spawns return to work in a spiralling motion or are reworked to function completely different, maybe in a similar way to the old "Eve window" from the rift times
- Oil and well tapout mechanics are revisited
- Family iron may not work well with this system and need lots of tweaking
- A mid-game air travel alternative to planes may be needed, perhaps a hot air balloon that can only afford two trips before breaking and needing repais would work
- I cannot shine any light on how this would be implemented and work within the restrictions of the game's engine (if possible at all) as I'm severely unfamiliar with it, maybe every couple hours the border would decay and send "seeds", invisible moving objects, that would settle somewhere ahead and mark where it'll move to
- Server limitations and performance are also issues that come to mind that are beyond my reach

Personal opinion:

Although implausible and full of holes, I'm personally very fond of this concept and the possible situations therein. A dynamic, ever changing playing field coupled with the impending doom of your town getting swept by the border if it survives long enough, reminiscent of the old player arcs, sounds exciting when compared to the stale gameplay loop present in the game today.

I'm sure there's lots more wrong with this system, but I'm just glad to share and discuss it in here, even if the game is stagnant right now and I haven't played it in months, I just can't get it out of my head.