a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I'll quickly post this again. I mentioned it once before, but Jason seemed not so keen. I don't want to press the issue, but there is a section of the law called "Moral Rights" which cover exactly the situations that you guys are talking about (protecting the reputation of the artist). I think when I mentioned it before Jason seemed to misunderstand what the term "Moral Rights" meant. It's not a name that I made up -- it's a legal term with a very specific definition.
I know it's unappealing and difficult to learn about and work with the laws as they are written -- they are very complicated. Sometimes they are very complicated because people want to abuse them. However, sometimes they are very complicated because the situations are complicated. "Moral Rights" falls under this second situation. I highly recommend learning about it.
Now, very importantly, in most countries you can't waive your moral rights (for exactly the reason why Jason gets upset with some uses of his work). However, I believe that in the U.S. if you put your work in the public domain, you waive your moral rights as well. In my opinion (not a lawyer), it is very important that you find out if this is true (I'm not American and while I have to learn about US copyright law because they force it on everybody else in the world, I'm not an expert in it). Either way, I highly recommend that you claim to retain your moral rights in your legal notices -- because you obviously want to retain them!
It's fine if your idea is that you're going to allow everything and then negotiate after the fact, but you have to be realistic in understanding that some people won't want to negotiate on those terms. There is a good chance that they can legally put their fingers in their ears and chant "not listening!" over and over again. If that's going to bother you, the fix is simple -- just put a statement in your legal section that retains your rights to not besmirch your name.
Back to lurk mode.
Great Shawn, i don't know anything about your friend, obviously, but I've "been around the block" a time or two in real life. Not everybody is wired up the same way. Sometimes its because of their personal life experience, and sometimes it seems to simply be just how a person is. However, there are quite a number of people who have difficulty having empathy with other people. Sometimes they don't seem to realise (or perhaps care) that another person has the same kinds of feelings that they do. I've heard it described as if you are watching characters in a TV program. The characters are obviously people, but they aren't *real* people. They have feelings in the show, but the feelings aren't *real* feelings. People can look at the world in the same way -- other people are people, but they aren't like *me*. They have feelings, but they aren't feelings like *my feelings*. They don't matter in the same way that I matter.
Like I said, people are different and this isn't a binary on or off thing. You have people who are super empathetic and fall down in a blob of quivering jelly whenever they hear anything bad about other people. On the other extreme you have people who will punch you in the face because they think the reaction on your face will be funny. Most people who function well in society are somewhere in the middle and it's a good thing. Either extreme is a kind of handicap and it's hard to be successful in your life if you are like that.
However, some very intelligent people who have difficulty with empathy have discovered that their lack of empathy makes it easy to manipulate others. Usually these people are very charming, fun, engaging and all around "great" people. Because they are often very intelligent, they can use their skills to also be very charismatic and they tend to be leaders. When it comes to personal relationships, though, they often view it like an equation -- there is a winner and there is a loser. It makes no sense to be the loser in the equation, so you should just take what you can.
There are lots of ways to rationalise the situation, but what it tends to come down to is, "I want X. I don't see why someone else should get what they want and I shouldn't get what I want. I'm going to take X." Arguments involving empathy tend not to be very effective because the other person is handicapped on that front. It's like saying, "You shouldn't do X, because it will hurt Homer Simpson's feelings". It just doesn't register as a sensible argument.
Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to change this situation. It is especially unfortunate because a lack of empathy coupled with an intelligent mind and charisma is usually a *very* successful combination in our societies (umm... just look at our industrial and political leaders). You will find (*especially* on this board) a contingent that will argue very convincingly that this is the *right* way to be. However, if you are one of the empathetic and you buy into this argument, then *you* will be the one with the handicap. There will be a winner and there will be a loser, and I'm afraid that *your* lot is the one of the loser.
The only winning move is not to play. Like I said, I don't know anything about your friend, but just be careful. You may find that your definition of friendship and their definition of friendship is not quite as compatible as you might have imagined.
I really think that Floofy's main issue could be addressed by starting a private server with like minded players. It might be hard to get enough players, but if you had an invitation only (or at least friend of a friend) server with house rules I think it could be quite popular. As Gus has pointed out in other threads, a $5/month Linode server is more than enough to run OHOL. I think the main sticking point is that starting up and running a private server takes a bit more technical knowledge than most people have (even though it's not *that* hard to do, or to learn). It's one of the things I was kind of hoping would develop in the community because clash of playing styles seems to be the largest hurdle for the game by a large margin. I think people will always want to play on the main server, but there are times when you want to do different things and I think that choosing different servers that caters for those interests is the easiest way to manage it.
To be honest, the thing I would personally like most is a bit more balance with clothes (and maybe automated ways of making clothes). At the moment, it's kind of hit or miss with the clothes because the biomes are so small. You can overheat easily. It would be nice to have clothes that were more versatile so that there was more incentive to make them. Also, it's relatively difficult to make clothes, which I think is fine in the early game, but by the time you have an industrial society, I think that clothes should be the norm (especially if you are walking around in cold biomes). One of the biggest automation efforts IRL were the cotton mills, and then later the automated looms. Especially as a programmer, I have a real soft spot for things like the Jacquard loom and would love to see them come in to the game.
And speaking of power, I'm curious about the movement from wood to charcoal to oil. So far no wind or water power (and no way to make canals... hmmm). These things were the really dominant power generation methods before coal and then oil took over. It's kind of unfortunate that the labour involved in using wheat, for instance is largely glossed over. I would be nice to make wheat difficult to transform into flour by hand, but give greater yields, etc if you are doing it with power.
lionon I guess because many experienced players hard code the server that they want to play on in the configuration. Most newbies don't specify and will therefore usually end up on server 1.
I like this mini-guide. I have a question, though. My biggest problem is finding an appropriate location. I seem to be really bad at this because I *never* find locations as good as the ones I see in established cities. Is there a technique for finding good locations? One thing I've tried is to follow the boundaries of biomes, but it doesn't seem to help.
Yeah, I've been caught by that before. The settings directory it uses is the one in the directory that you were in when you ran the server. So if you copy the server executable out to the top level, and run it from there, you have to use the settings in that directory. If you run it from the source code directory (which I don't recommend because it may have troubles updating the directory in the future), you have to change the settings there. The script that rebuilds the everything (but *not* the server!) is fairly rudimentary and if git fails to update the source code, it just plows ahead anyway. So it's best to copy the server directory up out of the source code and use the settings in that directory.
I think the transition from berries to other food is complicated for many people. Berries are nice for new people because there is a kind of ebb and flow to it. You eat berries. You eat the last berry. You add soil. You water. But even omlettes (which are pretty darn easy) are hard to figure out for a lot of people. When you are set up, you have a flat stone near the fire and a whole stack of plates. But you have to wait for the coals before you can cook the eggs. And afterwards you need to start the fire again and then go wandering around gathering eggs. You can be omlette boy or girl for about 2 minutes and then often you never do it again.
Other foods are even more complicated. Probably the only super easy one is popcorn. I'm surprised that more cities aren't prioritising popcorn as it's another kind of "gateway" food. It's an easy process to remember and to get into. But I think a lot of experienced players concentrate too much on optimising processes with the assumption that people are able and willing to cooperate. I think there needs to be more emphasis on the social aspect. How can I set this up so even a noob can do it? How can I get people to *want* to try something new rather than to gobble berries all day?
That's my impression, anyway.
There used to be a patch around for using WASD to move around. The problem is Jason said that he intentionally made the client base movement on location rather than direction so that it didn't overwhelm the server with requests for movement. In other words, with the mouse, you click on a location and go there. It's one message to the server (Player 5 is going to location X,Y). If you are going WASD, you send a message to the server for each tile you go to.
However (and I haven't checked the source code), currently the client will go in a certain direction continuously if you click and hold on the edge of the screen. When you stop holding it stops moving. So I assume this is kind of a compromise -- 2 messages (one to start moving in a direction and one to stop). Assuming I'm right, you should be able to use that for your controller. I've been meaning to remake the WASD mod, but haven't had time. I'm hoping it's something that eventually makes its way into the base game because playing on a track pad is no fun ;-) (I do not own a mouse because I almost never use one).
The way it works is that when you die of old age as an eve it "stores your camp". The server actually writes out a message that the camp has been stored, where the location is and what the radius of the camp is. When the next eve spawns it checks to see if a camp has been stored, and if it has, then you spawn somewhere in the radius of that camp. Or at least that's what it used to do (unless I got something wrong). I haven't verified that it works in the current version because I keep dying at 58 or 59 years old (it's been a *long* time since I played). I have no reason to believe that the functionality was removed and Alec's description matches my recollection exactly.
It's very handy for people like me that like to run on a private server and play solo mode. If you die to anything except old age you have to start again. If you die of old age, you can continue your site. There is actually a configuration setting for the minimum age that the eve camp will be saved. By default it is 60. I've tried setting it to other values (like 40) and while the camp appears to be saved, I never respawn near it. I haven't bothered to debug it to figure out why.
If this is on VitualBox, probably the reason is that the virtual machine is configured not to allow forwarded connections for security reasons -- it only allows connections from localhost. I don't have VirtualBox on my computer any more, so I can't troubleshoot it for you, but hopefully this will allow someone else to help you.
Dammit Jim, I'm a programmer not a translator :-) I speak Japanese, but I wouldn't trust myself to translate anything from English to Japanese. No, I meant working on getting the client and server to be able to represent unicode. This is a massive job -- bigger than the translation work by far. If nobody is working on it currently, I'll just do my own thing and point you to the results. Like I said, I can't guarantee any meaningful contribution, but I will at least look at it and try to create a list of all the places in the code that probably need to change.
It will likely be tricky to get unicode working *and* also maintain a patch as things move forward. However, having a Japanese translation is something that I'd like, so I'll try to throw some time at it. The main problem, I guess, is that I don't do discord.
Is anyone working on the task already? If not, I'll at least try to scope out the work to see what needs to get done. I'm actually hugely busy, so I doubt I'll be terribly useful, but you never know. My userid can be contacted at gmail if you want to get in touch privately.
I don't really play the game very much, but I was wondering along a similar line. It seems like villages are doomed to die out until players get a bit more experience. However, it seems completely feasible to wait out the die off by surviving outside of town. I was thinking of trying to start a satellite village that analysed the likely failure mode of the town and built what will be necessary to restart the town. Then by stealing (um... borrowing) manufactured goods from the town, you could have a kind of easy "re-Eve run". Even if you are male, I wonder how easy it would be to convince a female to hang out with you to wait out the inevitable die off in the big city. You'd want to be far enough away that the average noob wouldn't want to immigrate, but close enough that you could convince someone fertile to settle down there when you were close to death.
Probably this idea appeals to be because I'm not a big fan of multi-player games :-) I like doing my own thing and any excuse to get away from the crowd appeals to me (IRL too). However, I really wonder whether it would work...
I really like boggers suggestion. It doesn't really matter if you distinguish between suiciding and abandoned babies, because the -1 or -2 minutes is inconsequential until it adds up. You aren't going to be abandoned 10 times in a row (unless you are only playing as twins ;-) ). You can easily balance it by surviving longer the next life. It only means that if you want to sustain your longevity you have to survive to 40 or more every second life on average. If you are suiciding 3 or 4 times for every long life, you will whittle away your potential pretty quickly.
Getting a +2 for dying of old age is a good idea too because if you are a noob and you are constantly dying before 20, maybe your longevity gets down to 40 minutes. When you live that long, then you get a +2. As you get better at the game, you can live longer.
The numbers might need some thought, but overall I think the idea is really good.
I haven't looked in a long time, but there used to be 15 servers. I got this feeling that a while ago everybody was going onto server 1 because there were less active players. I wonder if there just needs to be better load balancing.
I've been watching a Youtube stream from Japanese player who is playing the mobile versions (Yes, I know, different developer). It's interesting that there are often 80 players or so on the first Japanese server, which seems like a lot. However, the play seems to be very stable -- probably due to the relatively high skill from the players. Possibly after the newbieness from Steam wears off (as players get more skilled) it will be better, but it *still* seems there are a *lot* of babies. I wonder how much load is on the servers at the moment...
Edit: Thanks to a previous thread - http://onehouronelife.com/reflector/ser … ion=report
I'm in Japan, so I'm pretty sure this is not prime time playing in the US, but it looks like 3-4 servers have 80 odd players and most of the rest are empty, so it's comparable. Probably lots of babies because people keep dying and respawning. Just have to wait until they get better at the game.
IMHO you can't grief by accident. If you do something that annoys other people by accident, that's not griefing. If you make a mistake and doom your whole town, that's not griefing. Griefing happens when you *intentionally* try to ruin somebody else's game. Killing, even murder, isn't necessarily griefing. Griefing happens when you don't care about whether the other players are having fun. For some people, it's not just that they don't care: they actually intend to make others angry, sad, afraid, etc.
Overall, I really like this game. In fact, my impression is that it has gotten much better over time -- especially with respect to griefing. I disagree that people are complaining more now than ever. I see much less complaints. However, I still have some issues with the way things are set up in the current game.
As I said, I have no problems with murder and intrigue. I have no problems with people plotting to bring down cities, or to throw monkey wrenches in the works. That can be fun. What I have problems with is that there is no way to negotiate consent. If I'm working hard to build up a city, I don't necessarily *want* someone to come in a wreck it. If I'm having a great game and enjoying my time, I don't necessarily *want* someone to murder me and cut my game short.
It's that lack of choice in game style that I think is lacking. I feel Donkey Town was a good idea, but I don't think it's a good idea to make it a complete punishment. I think Donkey Town should be the wild west. People should be able to choose to go there and wreak havoc.
But there is a snag which I can't quite figure out in my own head. If you have a game with wolves and sheep, the sheep do not want to play with the wolves. The wolves also do not want to play with the wolves. This is a problem. It's no fun preying on the unwary if there is nobody who is unwary. It's also no fun to be the one who is slaughtered each time. I don't know how to solve that problem, so I've largely kept my mouth shut. The only solution seems to be to ban the wolves from the game, because there is no way to make it fun for everyone with them in it.
Uncle Gus, any idea how much data a typical server sees? The $5 per month Linode server gives you 1 Tb, which seems like it would be more than plenty, but I'm curious.... Definitely thinking about putting up a server.
Your mother was clearly a griefer, unfortunately. Notice their last words. Notice they were killed by Vincent Mona. Notice Vincent Mona lived to a ripe old age of 58. You also had a little brother that lived to 60. So basically, your mother killed you at 5, then raised your brother. Your brother apparently escaped and then your mother had a third child that starved. Interesting that they starved at 0 and their last words were "!". So I'm guessing they they died trying to run away from their crazy mother. At this point she did something that pissed people off enough that they killed her. The fact that Vincent survived to an old age means that he was not a griefer -- griefers die young because they get killed for causing havoc.
So basically, you were just an innocent victim. Sorry. It happens.
I think the better question is, "How long will Jason work on this game before he decides that he wants to work on a new game".
I'm not sure why I always jump in to these kinds of threads (mainly because I'm a fanboi, I think...), but basically Jason has been making games for a long time. He's managed on a lot less money than this game has brought in. I may be wrong, but I think this game is probably far and away his most financially successful (possibly even by almost an order of magnitude).
I kind of like the question as asked, though, because it's one of the things I find fascinating. What is the business model? The source code is in the public domain! How is he making money? The answer: He made a web page that links to a payment processor and put a price tag on the game. If you look at one of his earlier blog posts, he even explains why he didn't go on steam (short answer: he was wisely afraid that he might not be able to handle the support if it got widely popular).
I think it's amazing, though, that you can set up a server and give the clients to your friends and play the game for free, but there is enough value in playing on the "official server" (and having everything set up for you) that people would *prefer* to pay $20 to play the game. I also think that the idea of "The game costs $20, but I can't stop you from not paying me -- I won't even try" is both courageous and inspired. Just the act of putting a price tag on it is enough for most people to understand the reality: Jason would like to get paid for his work.
On the other hand, the question that atticat probably would like to be answered is, "How do I know this isn't going to stop tomorrow". The answer is, "Because Jason wants to work on this game". There is no guarantee that this will continue forever (and it almost certainly won't). There is not guarantee that he won't be run over by a combine harvester tomorrow. I feel confident that he is OK with money (but I'm sure he would accept more) because he's been writing games for a *long* time, but there is no guarantee that he won't wake up tomorrow and think of some absolutely amazing new game that he *has* to do.
If that happens, though, you're still covered. You've got the code. You've got a community that wants to play the game. You've got talented programmers who are already tinkering with the code. This game is not going to disappear, no matter what happens to Jason. He's built that in to the $20 you paid. Incredible deal, really. It takes a lot of wisdom, foresight *and* experience to build what Jason has built here. We're pretty lucky.
I also want to say thank you for making this game! I don't actually play that much, but what little I do, I enjoy immensely. I also follow what's going on by watching Youtube, which I guess is kind of lame, but works for me :-)
As for interesting social life, I've been following Jason's career for a while now -- first got interested in his games when Cultivation came out. There were some articles here an there about how he lived his life at the time. Let me put it this way, if you play OHOL, maybe you already have a good idea :-). I even wrote him and asked for advice since I was considering doing similar things (I had just quit my job as a programmer and was living in essentially a shack on the beach in Japan). He was kind enough to write me back, and even though I decided to go a different way (the person who became my wife is very adaptable, but perhaps not quite up to the alternative lifestyle I was heading towards), I've remained a huge fan ever since.
One of the things I've always admired about him is that he tries to write games for a living, but puts everything in the public domain. He builds practically everything himself, even though it would be easier by far to glue together some libraries off the internet. But even though he builds stuff, he doesn't get bogged down forever writing a game engine -- he write games. And every game he writes is provocative and unapologetic. (I've mentioned before in passing about having to completely rewrite the ending of Cultivation :-D) The only game programmer I know of who is on par is Kenta Cho (and I haven't seen anything from him in a long time -- I think he got swallowed up by the real world, which is incredibly unfortunate).
But by far the best thing about Jason (from my perspective) is that he gives people so much room to find the best side of themselves. I was so happy when OHOL got as popular as it did, but I'm even happier now when I see what the game has become. If it were me I would have reacted poorly to the feedback he's been given and would have missed a lot of opportunities. I'm incredibly grateful for being able to watch the ride.
So, thanks again Jason and I hope things aren't too stressful (I'm sure release was insane, but it will be nice if it calms down a bit from there :-) ). BTW, I really want to get Cultivation running again -- it seems to have suffered from bit rot. Would be a fun little project. Anyone interested in helping (no matter what your programming level, as long as you want to learn), give me a shout at my user id on gmail.
This is basically the same conversation that plays on this forum over and over again. There are some games where people are intentionally asses to each other. Eve Online comes to mind. The entertainment of the game is to form alliances, fight against someone else, and betray each other. There is a rich meta game where people are literally horrible to each other for the sake of getting an advantage in the game. The designers of the game do this because they want to build that kind of game.
Frequently I see people post here saying that they want to play in a certain way and that they don't want to be restricted. What's left out of the discussion is the implicit idea that these people don't care if they are ruining the other person's game. Now, you will note that this goes both ways: a griefer does not care that they ruin the game for other people -- indeed, that is the point. Maybe a person doesn't even see themself as a griefer; only that their actions ruin the game for someone else and they don't care. What's important is that *they* have fun. On the other side, non-griefers want to play in a certain environment and don't want to have griefers. They don't care if the griefers are no longer able to play -- indeed that is perferable.
The problem, in my estimation, is not that one side is clearly right and that the other side is clearly wrong. It's that the game is designed in such a way that griefers (even if they are reluctant to call themselves that) and non-griefers are brought together. Specifically and intentionally, the game does not prefer one to the other. I think that's a big mistake from a game design perspective, even if it is interesting from a social experiment perspective. A choice needs to be made.
They don't have to give me credit, but they also cannot fraudulently take credit.
Quick note because I know much more about this topic than I would like. The types of things you are talking about are called "moral rights". Relevant wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
There are a surprising number of things that moral rights can cover. One scenario, in particular, you should be careful of. Imagine that someone takes OHOL, modifies it substantially so that it no longer matches your vision (or is, in fact, derogatory in some way), and then claims "This is AnAwesomeLife written and designed by reknowned developer Jason Rohrer". While you can get a trademark for OHOL to stop people from misleading people about the product, you can not do the same with your *name*. That's why moral rights are important.
Some countries require a waiver of moral rights. Unfortunately, it is my understanding that moral rights in the US is tied to the copyright. This may mean that you forfeit your moral rights if you put the work in the public domain. It's the main reason that I don't give up copyright on my works even though I agree with your main premise. Still, it has been my experience that the vast majority of people who make derived works are nice people and usually try to comply with your wishes even if they don't have to.
Hey Morti. First off although I didn't get to the end of your first long message (and I only skimmed the replies), I read enough to say that I completely agree with what you are saying.
Having said that, I'm not sure if you'll appreciate life advice from an older-than-average player here, but I'll give it a go :-) Seriously feel free to disregard every word I say knowing that it won't hurt my feelings.
Life is full of drama. There are people who feed on this drama. It's entertaining, intoxicating and addictive. I'm not one of these people so I can't say for sure, but I think it's a thing that some people can't live without. Even in games -- for some people, especially in games -- there is a need to introduce this drama. A game of raising children, running back and forth to get water, and organising the layout of seeds is... well... boring. Like I said, that's not me. I'm old. As soon as I finish typing this, I'm going to walk to the nearby town (30 minutes away), buy some milk and then I'm going to spend the rest of the day making cheese (which is code for hanging around, staring at a pot, occasionally stirring it).
Especially when people are young, the lure of drama is extremely attractive. What kind of emotions can emerge? What kind of excitement will bubble up out of nothing? Better than arranging digital seeds in monotonous rows, or staring at a pot and thinking, "Wow, that's white. Why is milk so white?"
People wonder why griefing happens, or why people want to inject emotion, fear, and violence into a game. They want that drama. They *need* that drama. They feel that the game is no good without that drama.
I don't like drama. I don't like reading this forum very much. It's full of drama and people who seek drama. I occasionally pop my head in to see where things are going and try not to get too involved. I try to remember that not everybody is the same. The world is like a stream with fast moving sections and still sections. I try to find an eddy which is out of the way of the tangled hostility of the current and enjoy my life.
It's easy to get drawn into that current. Once you put a foot in, it's hard to take it out again. You feel your blood rush. You feel your emotions rising. You feel the excitement that the people who seek drama are looking for. But if you don't like it, you should probably learn how to walk away; atune your senses for the still, deep water and seek it out. It requires more strength to wait that it does to act, but in exchange you can focus your energy on things of your own choosing (cheese... definitely cheese).
I hope some of that makes sense and that it helps you out. If not, then like I said, completely disregard it :-)
This PR is still open: https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/pull/18 Jason usually closes PRs that he doesn't want to merge, so I guess he's still thinking about it. I maintain a branch with that change and recompile the client every time a new one comes out (although I almost exclusively play on my own server). The change works really well and I haven't seen any bugs, so I hope that he'll get around to either merging or reimplementing it.
I'll put money on sliderule's explanation being the correct one. As someone who used ssh a lot before they added a workaround for this, I can tell you that there are lots of ways for TCP connections to get closed :-) One side or the other should get an indication that the connection was closed, though. The other side will hang because there is no way to detect if the connection is down other than to wait until the socket times out. The easiest way to solve the problem is by adding a "heartbeat". So basically you record how long it's been since you got a packet from the other side. If it's more than a certain amount of time (say 1 second, for a game), you send a "heartbeat" request. The other side sends the "heartbeat". If you receive the heartbeat out of order from your client request, then you can assume that there is a bug in your code and resend your request. If you don't receive a heartbeat after a certain amount of time, you can close the connection and reconnect (from the client -- the server can just close the connection and potentially wait for a reconnect request).