a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Moving and remodeling was why he stopped updating the game. But the community response to his work over the years has probably contributed to why he did not come back.
I'm honestly surprised it took this long for the dev to give up. This place has been a fount of negativity for years.
I mean, some negativity is deserved when you make your game "racism simuator"
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When you see the way he treats his fanbase's feedback, it's no surprise this place was negative.
It was negative because of him.
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DestinyCall wrote:Spoonwood wrote:Really, if we're being honest does there exist a serious way that the game does not pander to the female ego in that the women can do all of the reproducing by their own self, get all of the credit for families, and every woman is somehow just as strong as every man?
Spoonwood is living evidence that sometimes bullying IS the answer.
i'm sure we tried that couple of times tho
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"I've been watching a lot of Michael Jackson's old interviews and candid moments.
Seems about as close as we've ever gotten to an angel walking among us in human form.
And look what we did to him.
"
Michael Jackson? The pedo Michael Jackson? For reals?
What we do to him?
Give him fam and fortune?
Make him take those pills?
Jason, I really want to know what (you think) we all did to Michael Jackson.
Last edited by Laggy (2022-02-10 14:34:38)
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When you see the way he treats his fanbase's feedback, it's no surprise this place was negative.
It was negative because of him.
It's all his fault. His own doing caused this...
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Time for a few more Jason quotes:
I get that you don't trust me to do this, or that you think I'm an idiot, or whatever. But I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway, or at least try to. That's my job. To make the most amazing game ever.
I'm trying to have a good time. This is my dream job after all. I love this game, and I love working on it.
Somehow you want me to hate working on it. Or make me feel so bad about it that I quit?
Constraints are the game.
Constraints are what differentiate a game from everything else that is not that particular game.
Would monopoly be way cool if you could move as far as you want each turn or what?
OHOL was originally pretty doughy and formless. Eventually, it will be carved out of wood.
Maybe that premise will NEVER appeal to millions of people.
But my job is to make it as good as it can be. And I don't think I'm done with figuring that out yet. How do you make a game where you die every hour and say goodbye to everything insanely compelling? How do you make what players do in that context matter? This is the stuff that I'm working on.
I'm not sick of working on it..... but even if I was....
...why would I walk away from $22K per month?
There's no good reason to stop working on OHOL right now.
Fun is a subtle and sometimes-mysterious thing.
Maybe it's a bit like "funny". You know when you're laughing, and you know what's funny and what's not, but that doesn't mean you know how to write a better joke.
I make my living by writing a better joke. By dissecting "fun" and figuring it out.
And I also believe you that I'm too close to the game to see it clearly. Which is why I discuss the game and design problems constantly with other game designers.
It's also why observational playtesting is so important. I definitely don't do enough of that. I really don't have much opportunity to do it, and for this kind of game, it's especially expensive (b/c people play for many weeks).
But it's a bit like a comedian testing new material. They perform in front of an audience and note which bits make the audience laugh and which other ones fall flat. They DO NOT ask the audience afterward for ideas. They do not ask the audience what they WANT to hear as jokes. They don't look to the audience for suggestions about how to improve their jokes.
Observational playtesting is like that. How they behave is what matters. What they say or suggest is usually irrelevant.
Gonna be the best game ever..... but that's no easy task. There will be MANY more huge bumps along the road to greatness. So buckle up!
But when did the audience acquire the terrible delusion that they were masters and the game developers slaves? Do you really believe that's the way that great games are made? Or great art in any medium? Which great game was made that way? I don't know of any.
Wait, a guy who knows nothing about business single-handedly made a game that grossed $1.4 million in sales over a 20-month period?
It's the craziest story ever told!
And 20 months later, it is still grossing $22K per month.
Yes, you're looking at the world's greatest business failure right here. A guy who is doing everything wrong. A guy who made a game that is a total financial and design failure!
This complete business idiot somehow was successful by pure chance. Like a monkey banging on a typewriter until he randomly spit out Shakespeare.
You know that people have played OHOL for 1.3 million solid hours, right?
I guess that's only $1 per hour at the end of the day, which isn't very much money!
Yes, there are obviously HUGE problems with OHOL. I've never denied that.
That's why I'm working to figure out what those problems are and fix them.
The poll system is not to find out what the majority "want". It is to find answers to questions that I don't know the answer to.
But yeah, why don't I ask you what you want?
Because actually---brace yourself and gird your loins for a truth you don't want to hear---you don't know what you want. You think you do, but you're most likely wrong.
I would really like to see a village layout with two guys in charge of farming a tightly-controlled patch of berries and carrots, and they deliver the results to the shepherds and bakers, who also tightly control their areas. The shepherd delivers wool to the clothing makers and mutton to the bakers, and returns dung to the berry growers.
If you're hungry, you will need to go to the "output window" of the bakery, and NOT wander through the berry/carrot fields helping yourself to a terribly inefficient snack.
Furthermore, each of these areas would "train up" apprentices to inherit them and keep them going for the next generation.
My point is that WOW was like the biggest, most-well funded game in the universe at the time, and even they kinda phoned it in compared to the amount of thought and finesse that I put into my language system (making it actually pronounceable, and not just a cluster cipher), and also allowing babies to learn the language slowly over time, through gradual exposure, and speak with an accent when their learning is incomplete.
And that language system was just ONE of the 64 updates that you've gotten so far.
This isn't a sign of any huge flaw or "down turn" in OHOL. It's just another interesting wrinkle in a multi-faceted world where anything can happen.
You were born as a slave.
Wait, holy crap, you were born as a slave? That's friggin awesome, right?
I mean, how many hours have you played so far, maybe hundreds, and this was one of your stories? And you led a slave revolt and almost rescued everyone?
Are you kidding me? That sounds like a plot to a great movie, not a dumb old video game. Wow, I want to play that game. What game is that again?
So this game is nothing but the product of crazy, bold experimentation.
And that experimentation will continue. Endlessly, as long as I'm working on this game. Don't expect it to stop. Why would you want it to stop?
This is clearly what you paid for. You can't watch that trailer and NOT see a game that dares to try something totally new.
BTW.... you've all had the rift for 4 days now. 4 days out of 465 that the game has been running. That's less than 1% of the days. 99% of the days did not have the rift.
AND THE WORLD IS ENDING, GAME IS DEAD, JASON SUX. THE DRAMA!
I get it, though, b/c this game is so friggin' great and you're all so invested. That's good. The drama is good. It's not boring.
And that's my job. I'm the not-boring man.
Were the past four days the most boring 1% of days in OHOL? God, how many pages of Discord, I can't even scroll back. You guys are bored out of your minds! It's like watching paint dry, this whole OHOL thing. Game is totally stalled. Dev is lazy. Game hasn't had an update in months.
No wait, game is changing every week in interesting and tantalizing and thought-provoking ways. This is actually the most exciting and varied and interesting development process IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES. I'm not joking here. If you don't believe me, go back through the weekly update history news posts. Then find me another game that had this much interesting stuff happen in 15 months.
And on top of that, it's all being done by one guy. Just one guy, working alone. EVERY PEN LINE A SUPREME ACT OF WILL.
And on top of that, I'm having the time of my life!
So thank you, all of you, for making this possible. You've all made my wildest dreams come true.
Ahhh Jason ... never change!
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I thought it could be fun for everyone to post their favorite Jason quote in this thread.
Mine is:
"I'm Spoonwood" - Jason Rohrer
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllll
That explains everything!
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lol DestinyCall, this one aged well
... Game is totally stalled. Dev is lazy. Game hasn't had an update in months.
No wait, game is changing every week in interesting and tantalizing and thought-provoking ways. This is actually the most exciting and varied and interesting development process IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES. I'm not joking here. If you don't believe me, go back through the weekly update history news posts. Then find me another game that had this much interesting stuff happen in 15 months.
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Did you ever touch the edge of the game?
https://onetech.info/365-Touched-Edge
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Or buried a wolf?
https://onetech.info/3427-Buried-Wolf
Or flooded a pond?
https://onetech.info/513-Flooded-Pond
Or defaced a bone pile?
https://onetech.info/3195-Defaced-Bone-Pile
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Edge is the only impossible one.
Buried wolves exist so wolf farming can be done else the despawn timer is an hour which completely ruins a wolf farm. Done it plenty of times.
Pond flooding was removed because you could completely destroy a towns water supply along with ponds by putting water back in. This is due to water being based on chance of deplete vs counting how much is truly in the pond. Spam a bucket against a deep well and you would instantly run the tech to the next level.
Defaced bone piles exist because Jason was having buggy issues with bones in baskets being put into carts. For whatever reason the bones started taking on other peoples names instead of their own. So instead of figuring what was causing the bug he changed bones to only be containable in carts once defaced.
Worlds oldest SID baby.
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Edge is the only impossible one. For whatever reason the bones started taking on other peoples names instead of their own.
lol that sounds like a funny bug.
What about parts: https://onetech.info/627-Parts
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lol that sounds like a funny bug.
What about parts: https://onetech.info/627-Parts
These are all nudity parts
It's probably used by the script to generate the nudity mod.
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Yeah those are the bits and bobs that make up players. If you ever seen Pein’s breast mod you can see which part got altered. Also can turn your player from a grower to a shower but I think enough games have a penis scale in them.
fug it’s Tarr.
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Or buried a wolf?
https://onetech.info/3427-Buried-WolfOr flooded a pond?
https://onetech.info/513-Flooded-PondOr defaced a bone pile?
https://onetech.info/3195-Defaced-Bone-Pile
I remember flooding a pond more than once. I think because I would take water out, then change my mind or have nothing immediately to put the water into. What I didn't like about pond flooding was that it killed the goose in the flooding of the pond, and I think the egg would disappear too.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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