One Hour One Life Forums

We live in a post apocalyptic society. Before the apocalypse, humankind has been at its peak. Scientists discovered everything that can be discovered. And of course, they found immortality. Soon they injected this miraculous medicine in every living being. No plant would rot, no creature would die, there was no need for greed or hunger. Of course recreation had to be limited. Soon the world existed in a fine balance and the golden age of immortality lasted for about 300 years. But one mad scientist, named Jason, couldn't abandon his love for the world before immortality immortality. He dreamt of a world where he could once again see the smile of his child. So in a mad usage of all his knowledge and skills, he liquified himself and spread his essence around the world. This had several horrifying effects on the world. First, every primate which breathes Jason essence that doesn't share enough DNA would die in suffering leading to extinction. Other animals would bear children that are a caricature of themselves. When the density of the  the omnipresent Jason aether would get too high or enters the lungs of a female, a mortal human would be formed. With fierce hunger, living of the immortal land and thereby destroying it. All those humans will have only one father, the essence of the Jason. Ironically, Jason has no way to observe this brutally created new world. So his dream of seeing a child's smile one more time, died with his body. That is why animals are immortal and humans ain't.

PS: legend says Jason's immortal relatives still live underground up to this day.....

+1

I put a building in your building. So you can insulate while you insulate?

Imo OHOL buildings are weird in its own way. It's just a bunch of walls without any roof. Good thing the warm air doesn't go upwards. I would love a good reason to have buildings. Right now it's only a small organization bonus plus small insulation bonus minus space and resources for walls?

To make things decay slower seems weird since most things do not decay......

Another weird idea: you can own a house by saying "this is my home" inside a building. Your children have the same home as you as long as they are young. And eating at home gives BONUS FOOD, yay!

I played this update today. It is simply amazing.
So many different foods in town, incentive to go out to gather wild foods. Live the yum dream!

Tables also went from okay to super awesome.

Imo this is exactly what you need in a game with thousands of craftable objects: mechanics that prevent dead content.

Thank you for reviving so many food items!
I would be soo happy if you would revive even more dead content. There is a lot of unused stuff out there....

I will make an example of a question that would be beneficial imo:

Which of the following is the most annoying in the game:
- I can not build everything I want to
- I cannot carry my stuff everywhere I want to
- I can not kill everyone I want to
- I don't know where the things are
- griefers destroy everything
- I don't know what to do
- Life is boring
- None of the above

Then, depending on the result, Jason could work on a solution or make another poll for further clarifications

Imo there is a lot of design space for improvement.
Stove could not take a whole minute to turn on, add fuel, fire it and you're ready to start.
Stove could have two or more slots, so you could make several things at once.
A stove could be used for the old food and also enables new food etc.

While I don't really enjoy how sheeps feel (lamb does from hunger, sheep does not. Only grows whool when fed etc.) I disagree with you here pein.

The game is updated every week and can thus change the value of each and every item. Imo it would be bad design to reach for a perfect balance and smooth workflow. If you now nerf poop, maybe next update we don't have enough and need to rebalance again - not a nice way to solve this.

This game is said to be about problem solving. And 'too much poop' as well as 'too few poop' are imo nice problems.

As long as it doesn't break the game I would always prefer an in-game solution.

If poop is rare we can feed the shorn sheep in order to avoid too many bones and mutton, then we can use dung boxes for proper storage.

If there is too much poop we also have the option to clean. Put it in a bucket, bring it out of town, let it decay there. Or maybe pens are just not viable anymore and we now need free roaming sheep + carrot garden?

However, when there is no in-game solution that feels good (shoveling dung out of a bucket is repetitive and tedious), I would prefer a overhaul of said solution. Maybe let us empty a dung bucket all at one to get a big warm smelly pile of sh** that decays after half an hour. Maybe even let us fill carts with dung.

You get the idea, don't remove the problem, improve the solution.

@DestinyCall CCM sounds like a nice Experiment. I think I try it some day to see how it feels. Although I have the feeling that 'milkweed but with some other sprite and name' is not the best design choice (feels a little 'flat').
Your comments on the leaning idea sound reasonable. I guess if you would be able to dissassemble carts, then it would be easier to teach others. You could although use paper to teach and learn skills. Just make it possible to put a known skill on a piece of paper, and everybody that picks up the paper learns that particular skill. Surely would need a lot of balancing work to feel good (which are basic tasks? how high are the probabilities of inspiration? is it better to learn a whole 'batch' of skills etc.)
Imo the flaws with auto cursing you pointed out are valid. The 'how to protect new players from griefers?' problem seems to be a very hard one….

@pein I think I got what you mean with limitations. Is it about choices on a grand scale? About more pathes to the same objective? Linear gameplay also has some Benefits. But maybe non-linear gameplay suits this 'open world sandbox' style games a little better.

@jasonrohrer It is true that object radar feels unrealistic. But the important question is, if it feels too unrealistic. Every game needs unrealistic elements in order to function. Just look at 'exact information about your hunger, yum bonus, curse counter', orders from leaders, ley lines, Combat system etc. in ohol. I don't know it the idea I talked about breaks immersion.
Furthermore, I clearly see the frustration due to differences between player knowledge and character knowledge (if you want to put it that way). But on the other hand, the games I enjoyed most in my childhood where 'Zero to hero' games like gothic. In this games you always knew that certain actions are possible in general (and how they would be played) but are restricted due to 'character knowledge'. Still it just felt awesome to get better and better. I wonder what is needed to catch that feeling instead of frustration. Maybe the difference is between RNG and accomplished by your own hands…. It could be possible that a well adjusted system like that leads to more diverse starting conditions where you have to figure out how to Play without everything available. A little bit like capablanca random chess in contrast to chess. Or the amount of frustration is just too high.... Idk

Thank you all for your interesting viewpoints.

Keep in mind that decay timers could be an hour or two. Does this change something for you?

Can you specify what makes this implementation weird?

Would a system without grids but with pointers to nearest object of a specific king be more interesting for you?

Yes, this is very true. In my mind you would either completely overhaul (or add to?) the tech tree to make different bootstraps in different biomes possible or make ressources not biome exclusive. It could still be a biome if the spawn rate in the home biome is much larger than in other biomes so it runs out much quicker. Does this change something for you? Rare items would be something like Gold, Copper etc. Would need balancing.

Maybe it does not give more meaning. The idea is that "there are tons of pies someone made ages ago" feels different than "it is important that someone is always there making pies so we don't starve".

The idea is that characters have knowledge. First eve and every baby would just have the basic skills - maybe stop with stone tools and simple tasks for that (stacking stuff, Picking stuff up, pulling a cart etc). When your character is on the same screen as someone who does perform a task that you dont know, you learn the skill and can do it yourself right after (learn how to chop trees/make steel/bake pies). This makes it important to 'teach' the skill to characters (not players). Every once in a while a random character gets a random skill based on his current skill set as epiphany (I suppose you would need to implement a skill tree or something). Thus the things you could and could not do would differ from family to family and progression would be slowed down. The idea is that the characters learn from watching (additionally to the Players I guess). A system to easily check which skills you have would be required.

Let me clarify that donkeytown and old curse system would be no longer valid. So the disadvantage is that you cannot be Born into the lineage of someone who did something you did not like or kill you. Someone you don't want to play with to begin with? Does this change something for you? Can you specify what you don't like?