The Door Problem

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-02-22 16:00:39

Now that more towns have buildings and most players have spent some lives inside it's become pretty obvious - we have a door problem.

Two people stand at a door eager to go through it. Everytime one of them opens the door the other one tries to open the door also. Net result - door is still shut. This goes on for somewhere between ten seconds and a minute before one of them manages to get the door opened. Then a stream of people go through. Then the door is left open and any airspace bonus the building had is lost.

Doors that are acting as, well, doorways, to players are not functional as airspace boundaries. If the door is a functional airspace boundary - it is not useful as a passage way.

This can not continue. It's making buildings as a whole much less useful than they would otherwise would be, and thus making people less likely to build. If a fire on some floorboards is just as useful as a fire surrounded by walls and open doorways, why would anyone ever build walls? They take up precious space and block our paths.

There are many details of human life that are not simulated in OHOL. We don't simulate using the bathroom, or how scratchy our unwashed hair gets. We do NOT need to take the time to click doors open and shut. Unlocked doors should be treated as empty spaces for the purposes of path finding, objects for the purposes of setting things down, and blocking objects for the purposes of airspace heat calculations.

Who's with me? What are the problems I'm not anticipating? I'm very much willing to post this on the subreddit for suggestions, but I'd like to hear folks thoughts first.

CatX · 2019-02-22 16:08:16

You're on your way through an open door from across the room. Suddenly someone closes the door. The game automatically tries to find a path through a different open doorway, instead of letting you continue to the door and stop in front of it. Very annoying.

denriguez · 2019-02-22 16:11:22

Agreed. I'd also like to see the standard access door be one that cannot have a lock added to it. I haven't seen this in-game, but I think it's only a matter of time before griefers start making locks and adding them to the nursery doors, then running away with the key. Either that, or make locks much simpler to disable on doors, such as using a two-person interaction that involves a tool (axe or something) and quick subsequent clicking (like digging a berry bush), and probably results in a destroyed door.

Tarr · 2019-02-22 16:21:00

I think the consensus at this point is buildings aren't worth it overall anyways. You gain very little in terms of temperature, you create a clutter nightmare due to limiting your space without adequate storing options in game, and we have the door problem. At first it seemed like you wanted multiple doors to minimize chances of things being locked and requiring the hassle of removing the lock but with more doors you end up having to micromanage more around whether the people even care to shut them after leaving. Making heat gates to slow people down (you open one door, walk two tiles and have to open) just leads to people leaving both doors open anyways.

With opening and closing doors being manual it feels really gimmicky to go around and open every single door and then close it when you want to leave. The door issue also adds into the fact that buildings are not fast to make in the first place. If it takes me longer to build a "proper" building than it does something like a diesel engine it should be worth my time shouldn't it? After looking at the results other people have been having with buildings it's clear. There's no reason to keep making them. They take too long, do too little, and in general just make an area less desirable through their limiting factors.

fragilityh14 · 2019-02-22 16:24:09

it is annoying, we definitely in general should be able to control doors by clicking on them, but we do need to fix the pathing issue, because it's way too damn tedious, especially given how thin they are, with the north to south ones being far worse. So it's not just a matter of clicking, its also often more than one click, adding to the annoying, because if you click the other side of it you start repathing, etc.

i almost got stuck in the tutorial because i couldn't find the gate and that was when i had already played the game plenty lol. I actually saw a negative review from someone who hadn't figured out finishing the tutorial (kind of funny but also sad)

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-22 16:24:48

Well.... what would the closed door look like when you walked through it? Would you just pass through like a ghost?

It's funny that doors have been in the game for more than a year, but no one mentioned this problem until now----because you weren't actually using them for anything real.

And I'm pretty sure the pine door cannot be locked.

As far as path-finding goes, what you're describing should only happen if you're holding the mouse down. If you simply click outside the door, and then someone shuts it, your path should be truncated, server-side, right at the door.

Tarr · 2019-02-22 17:29:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

And I'm pretty sure the pine door cannot be locked.

Correct, the only reason no one has ever brought this up is because it's the only useful pine item and no one wants to see the most expensive building material nerfed. Especially when it's worse than adobe + stone so a pine door is the only real use for pine walls.

In regards to the door issue I'm not sure what you do. Right now too many doors = whack a mole as you try to keep all of them shut while people walk in and out of them while one or two doors leads to door jams where too many people are trying to click them so no one can get in or out. Is it possible to just make it where clicking the door leaves it open for X amount of time and then it auto shuts itself? This solves the issue of people trying to trap people via door spamming while also allows multiple people to use a door without all the extra needed clicking.

Edit: You could even leave locked doors the way they are now as those doors are specifically meant to only be opened or closed ever so often.

Last edited by Tarr (2019-02-22 17:33:38)

JoshuaN · 2019-02-22 17:33:36

You could animate doors so that when someone is pathing through a door way it opens right before they walk through it and remains open until nobody else is pathing through it. It then closes with zero players pathing through it. This would also eliminate doors flapping in the wind if they were to open and close every time a player walked through it.

Big rooms don't suddenly lose all heat when a single person opens and closes a door, in this way i think the game is lacking detail. This is the reason doors exist in the first place, so the room minimalizes heat loss when people are going in and out. If the door remained open for a considerable amount of time, and maybe there was a breeze, you could expect it to start getting colder. (or warmer in the opposite case.)

You could make "room airspace" slowly degrade to biome temp when a door is manually left open. Manually closing door would then gradually change heat to its optimal temperature (fire + insulation).

Last edited by JoshuaN (2019-02-22 17:47:07)

Spoonwood · 2019-02-22 18:17:02

jasonrohrer wrote:

It's funny that doors have been in the game for more than a year, but no one mentioned this problem until now----because you weren't actually using them for anything real.

I don't know what you find funny. Making doors or building buildings was and still is a player's choice. Also, if the players were not using doors, I don't see how it was a problem *for them*.

That said, it wasn't like buildings with doors didn't exist before also.

jinbaili83 · 2019-02-22 18:28:36

My ideas on solving door problems:
1. Comunity developes complicaded code for who opens door first (older/younger,male/female,clothed/naked etc..)
2. Town assigns job of doorman who opens doors in bussy areas(may need new fancy hat)
3. Spring loaded door that closes automatically (we have spring in game)
4. Revolving door (players just go through)

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2019-02-22 19:17:26

jasonrohrer wrote:

Well.... what would the closed door look like when you walked through it? Would you just pass through like a ghost?
It's funny that doors have been in the game for more than a year, but no one mentioned this problem until now----because you weren't actually using them for anything real.

Eventually, I'd like to have an automatic animation, like JoshuaN described, using the existing sounds and motions. But if that's difficult to code, I'd be fine with passing through it like a ghost. I think the sound would be more important than the animation, because I've already seen the door open and close so fast it didn't seem to move at all.

And yes, congrats! You have moved the meta enough that we are actually seeing buildings outside of solo play. Folks were building rooms before, but in solo play settings we never noticed the problem (much). Doors are super annoying in multiple player settings, though...

The towns I visited today each had one functioning room - the nursery which is co-located with the eternal fire, some stacks of firewood, and a box of spare clothing. There were sometimes other rooms built, but they were either unused or unfinished, and sometimes both.

The meta is settling on one very small room for an entire village...fixing doors (and storage) would definitely help make buildings more appealing.

Nepumuk · 2019-02-22 22:09:37

Jason is there anything keeping you from making doors automatic? From either a programmer or a philosophical standpoint? If not, just do it. If yes I would like to know what it is. Look, we finally have buildings. Is it really a good idea to make using buildings infinitely more tedious by having annoying door closing/opening mechanisms?

Léonard · 2019-02-22 22:43:57

Tarr wrote:

I think the consensus at this point is buildings aren't worth it overall anyways. You gain very little in terms of temperature, you create a clutter nightmare due to limiting your space without adequate storing options in game, and we have the door problem. At first it seemed like you wanted multiple doors to minimize chances of things being locked and requiring the hassle of removing the lock but with more doors you end up having to micromanage more around whether the people even care to shut them after leaving. Making heat gates to slow people down (you open one door, walk two tiles and have to open) just leads to people leaving both doors open anyways.
With opening and closing doors being manual it feels really gimmicky to go around and open every single door and then close it when you want to leave. The door issue also adds into the fact that buildings are not fast to make in the first place. If it takes me longer to build a "proper" building than it does something like a diesel engine it should be worth my time shouldn't it? After looking at the results other people have been having with buildings it's clear. There's no reason to keep making them. They take too long, do too little, and in general just make an area less desirable through their limiting factors.

Amen to that.
Though this thread is about doors specifically but I definitely agree to everything you said about buildings in general.

As for the doors, the absolute worst I find is when the only available fire is inside the nursery building while you're working as a smith (or just need charcoal).
This is hell. I just want to light up my forge!

I am of the opinion that doors should just be automated.
Why do we need to open/close them manually? Does that add anything to the game?
There are lots of issues because of this.

The pathing gets very annoying very fast.
Sure, it's fine if you click just once though.
I don't know about other people but personally I've stopped doing that long ago.
I think people just learn to either make continuous mouse clicks or just spam click because whenever you have to walk long distances you have to keep clicking otherwise your character just stops as your destination is offscreen 99% of the time.

Second is due to the fact that your camera is moving a lot especially if you're trying to go in/out of a building (as it often covers a lot of your screen). So while the first click to open it is fine (sometimes), closing it can be extra tedious.
I realize that this issue doesn't specifically affect doors but since buildings are supposed to be common, so is opening and closing doors which makes them extra stressful/tedious to work with.

I also find it kind of odd that you let us build roads that can make us travel automatically but not doors that open automatically.
I mean the link isn't super-obvious and hard to describe but hopefully you get what I mean.
You're willing to give us quality of life features for moving but it stops at doors. Why doors specifically?
I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that if you're going to argue that we need doors to be manual because they are in real life then why wouldn't it apply to walking too?
Or maybe you could argue that you have auto-walking roads because in real life our brains often do go into some sort of auto-pilot mode when you have to take a long and familiar walk and just does the work for us while we think about other stuff. But that would also apply to doors or any repetitive task in general.

BlueDiamondAvatar wrote:

Eventually, I'd like to have an automatic animation, like JoshuaN described, using the existing sounds and motions.

I have been thinking of coding an auto door pathing/opening/closing feature for my own client lately. I've just been generally lazy so I never got to it.
But AFAIK roads are already working that way: the client does everything on its own and the server knows nothing. So essentially what happens with roads is that clients have an auto-walker coded in them.
And that's how I would do auto-doors (as a client feature).
Though if Jason were to do it this way, he might run into the problem of other people interfering with the door opening/closing and I'm not sure how you could fix that.
Multiple people using a door at the same time already results in conflict anyways automatic or not and I'm pretty sure the only way to address that would be serversided.

CatX · 2019-02-22 23:09:47

Someone in a different thread suggested that bear rugs should be available as doorway covers as an alternative to doors. That sounds like a great idea to me. All the bear hunts this would lead to! Bear luring griefers would be celebrated, not cursed.

futurebird · 2019-02-22 23:23:44

CatX wrote:

Someone in a different thread suggested that bear rugs should be available as doorway covers as an alternative to doors. That sounds like a great idea to me. All the bear hunts this would lead to! Bear luring griefers would be celebrated, not cursed.

I like this idea.

Though I suspect many who bring a bear back to town just don't know how big of a problem it can be... they want medical help, or to say goodbye and give their stuff away... and then everyone gets et.

pein · 2019-02-23 07:41:16

an airlock with storage can eliminate the problem with people who want to bring stuff
and an airlock with storage for output of pies/tools, whatever production is inside building eliminates the problem of people who take stuff
this still wont eliminate the problem of people dropping kids
but the rest of players who go in with no reason, can be seen and tell them to close doors
also having 2 doors, hopefully people close one of them before opening other, so airspace and insulation can remain even if it's a bit worse

DestinyCall · 2019-02-23 16:16:51

futurebird wrote:

Though I suspect many who bring a bear back to town just don't know how big of a problem it can be... they want medical help, or to say goodbye and give their stuff away... and then everyone gets et.

Ah to be young again. So young and so trusting.

Bears sleep comfortably unless they are awoken and pursue relatively slowly. Unless your Eve made a terrible mistake positioning her camp, bear caves are usually far from town. In order for someone to "accidentally" wander back to town with a bear following them, they would need to be blissfully unaware of their surroundings or ignorant regarding the obvious consequences of their actions. It pretty much has to be a purposeful act of griefing.

And when it happens several times in one life, there is no mistaking it for an accident. Bear luring is a fairly common form of griefing, just like random stabbings/shootings. Don't trust "accidental" killers. They will kill again and again.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-02-23 16:19:34)

voy178 · 2019-02-23 18:16:24

If you got bear caves in the area you need a hunting pack who goes out and flush out the bears and kill them one by one eliminating the threat to the town and get some sweet rugs in the process.

DestinyCall · 2019-02-24 00:25:38

jasonrohrer wrote:

It's funny that doors have been in the game for more than a year, but no one mentioned this problem until now----because you weren't actually using them for anything real.

There was no point in complaining about it when buildings were largely cosmetic. Doors were either not used (to avoid getting locked inside) or left open (because why bother closing it if we just need to open it a few seconds later). But problems with doors and pathfinding have existed under the surface and contributed to why buildings were under-utilized. It just didn't become a large enough issue until more people were actively trying to use buildings for their intended purpose.

Kind of like how the severe cold in neutral biomes was a lot more tolerable, so long as there were better options avsilable, but when those better spots were removed, the game difficulty took a sudden upswing. Since you could no longer avoid the cold, it was a much bigger problem, even though the neutral biomes were technically "unchanged" from previous versions.

BladeWoods · 2019-02-24 20:54:44

One concern I have with doors effectively becoming passable walls is, why even use walls then? Just make a building out of doors. That would minimize pathing time and be the most efficient thing.

I think we need to be able to build buildings that are bigger than 8x8 without losing heat bonus, correct me if I'm wrong cause I haven't tested it, but from the sound of things being in a giant room would be the same thing as being outdoors since the game only checks an 8x8 around you. Bigger buildings would help minimize the negatives of walls and doors being in your way.

DestinyCall · 2019-02-24 21:06:19

One limitation to making a building of doors is milkweed. Making a wood door takes two boards and a rope. Making pine doors cost even more milkweed. They are too expensive to mass produce, unless you have access to a lot of wild lassoes.

It would be a great way to avoid being locked inside the bakery. Good luck getting locks on nine doors without anyone noticing!

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-02-24 21:09:35)

yaira · 2019-02-24 21:31:01

I've got an idea
make it so that player can only open a door!!
closing is automatic. like 3 seconds after it's open.
so when multiple ppl click a door, it will remain open.

Booklat1 · 2019-02-24 21:51:33

is it a consensus that doors need at least not being spammable and heat convection is weak?

Kinrany · 2019-02-25 02:18:18

A client side mode mod could make opening and closing doors automatic. Clicking on a tile behind a door would show the player a path through the door, but the server would only know that the player is walking to the tile next to the door.

Last edited by Kinrany (2019-04-01 23:06:43)

Whatever · 2019-03-31 20:48:09

Kinrany wrote:

A client side mode could make opening and closing doors automatic. Clicking on a tile behind a door would show the player a path through the door, but the server would only know that the player is walking to the tile next to the door.

Yes, someone please make this and share the code.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-02-22 16:00:39

The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

#3 2019-02-22 16:11:22

Re: The Door Problem

#4 2019-02-22 16:21:00

Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

#16 2019-02-23 07:41:16

Re: The Door Problem

#17 2019-02-23 16:16:51

Re: The Door Problem

#18 2019-02-23 18:16:24

Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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Re: The Door Problem

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