One Hour One Life Forums

To me automation seems a bad fit for this game. What would it even look like?

A huge closed off area that delivers crops at certain exit points?

A big factory no one should enter that just throws clothes out on some conveyor?

Any way I envision automation as possible it just seems a bit unfun and if it's some complex system someone built up, just ripe for griefing; or getting ruined by someone unknowledgable.

If you had these it would open up chances to do other stuff since you wouldn't have to worry about food or clothes or tools, but that's just like playing the game without these obstacles for anyone born after such a factory was made. People already seem to be unhappy with the lack of challenge in a village with all the necessities taken care of...

I would like more things that take player input, but can do things in bulk. Kind of like the way the stew works, you put a bunch of work in, and in return you get a bunch of food. This way we could have an actual forge, and make a lot of steel (you don't really make railroads from single ingots, nam sayin'?), or a more industrial approach to mining, or maybe compost barrels and such, so you don't make dirt in single piles.

Anyways things like that seem like they would be a good addition to the game instead of automation. They still require player input, and get stuff done quicker. I'd really like mechanization too, but we seem to be a far way away from that still.

Good job. Also sweet for the steam community. It'll probably take them a while to discover the glory of onetech, and most newbies usually start searching for info on wikis and such.

Great story, but did I miss something? Can you steal kids that are not yours and name them now?

I guess people would need incentives to play whatever life they get. Every life would have to be valuable in some way, I just can't think of any good way to do this, that isn't completely un-fun.

I've always played this game as a sort of rogue-like, but people have different expectations of it. Maybe there should be hardcore and softcore servers? Splitting up the player base is probably a bad idea, but its just an idea...

I was just thinking in terms of what would actually happen for both someone who plays a few games, and someone who plays all day long.

Say you played in a real great town. You died at old age.

The more casual player might call that a day, maybe play another round. No chance really to play another life in that town; even with the current system, he might have had enough play time for the day and go off after the second game.

The other player would start up another game. Not such a great town, but it was alright. Died at old age. Not really thinking about respawning in this village again, the first one still on his mind. Starts up another game, going great, but dies at 55 since he forgot to check his food when the chimes stopped - arrgh.

Now, if this player is really dedicated to trying to get to the first town and see how it looks now, he'd play a game till he was 5, kill himself and then baby suicide untill he gets into that sweet sweet first town.

Now that I wrote all this down I see it wouldn't really solve much for a dedicated player . But I was thinking something similar to League of Legends, where the first win of the day was on a 23h cooldown instead of 24h as a QoL kind of solution.

Two hours is just the absolute maximum you can squeeze out of two lives and if you mess it up (and really wanted to get to the first town) it leaves a weird third limbo-life that you slog through how ever much you need to to get to what you really want. If that makes any sense .

For the casual players, I guess they already rarely see their old towns anyway, so any sort of time-out period would probably be aimed at the hard-core players and the griefers, while minimally obstructing play for the casual players.

That seems really interesting. It would be great if the lineages lasted longer however... For more casual players playing one full life in a village and then two more full lives before getting a chance to play in your initial one would definitely not hapen in a day. Another thing to consider about this idea is that by setting it to two full hours sounds a bit restrictive in the sense that you really have to play either two complete games to get the chance or else have to start a third no matter what. I'd prefer it set in a way that two good lifes (but not necesairily complete) would be enough time to pass you into the initial family's birthing pool. So two lives over 50 and you're looking at about 1h 40min of downtime from the initial family.

I am a fan of the lineage ban by the way, since I feel it varies up the gameplay. I would probably count myself into the more casual players base however.

I think considering a complete revamp of the temperatures of the biomes should be considered. And also personal heat.

Currently, if you somehow maxed out your insulation on a neutral tile, you'd be cold. People are most confortable in the ~25°C ish temperatures, even though our body temperature is around 37°C. Our bodies produce extra heat they count on shedding.

Being perfectly insulated is the same as having the entire enviroment the same temperature as the insulated bit. Now think about how hot a 37°C enviroment is, even though that's your bodies temperature! That's what perfect insulation would feel like, the way the game is currently however you'd get 0.4 heat. Not even fully comfortable warmth.

I propose players should generate more heat themselves. Then polar zones could be colder, and you could balance furs to get you comfortable in the cold. Adding heat generation/loss to low tech clothing feels a bit like cheating (that's what high tech clothes should do!), although for desert clothing making heat consuming clothing might already be necessary.

This also kind of assumes bigger biomes, since with the biomes this small right now, you just want a set of clothing that works everywhere.

Just what flintstone said all the way. All the villages feel identical because they mostly are. Making a village anywhere appart from a green/swamp/prairie intersection is completely unfeasible. The tech tree depends too much on resources from different biomes and it just makes the game feel samey every game.

Also one thing I feel is missing is an incentive to make buildings. Currently making shelter is just a sucky waste of time. People just do it to pass time once the civilization is very far up the tech tree. Noone makes houses because they do nothing. Because you can't build infrastructure in your town even if you eventually respawn into it, it won't FEEL yours, since nothing you made really survived up to your respawn. Making a house and then finding it in use or even in complete disrepair would give players a greater connection to the towns they live in.

I think people would want houses, they just have no reason to make them right now, since the game is a permanent food struggle. Most people either work on or near the farm, so food is always close, because you starve really fast otherwise. Stew changed that a little, but still people make lots of stew somewhere near village center, even though it would be a great source of food for a group working somewhere on the outskirts of town.

So yeah in general, make playing in different biomes possible, and also give us incentive to make long lasting structures in towns.

Flooring does insulate, and it generates no heat. Oddly, the way insulation works, it insulates you from neighbouring tiles. That's a weird thing for a floor to do if you ask me. In most cases, flooring should bring you closer to the middle, since your character generates some heat. That is, unless it's on desert in which case it should just get you even hotter, the same way clothing does.

I thought it was funny I actually thought about how the floors need fixing, and was thinking about a way to do it by making floors generate heat instead of insulating. Honest question: What made you think floors generate heat?

On topic, I'll agree with anshin that floors need fixing.

Never gonna give you up,
never gonna let you down,
never gonna run around or desert you.

Never gonna make you cry,
never gonna say goodbye,
never gonna tell a lie or hurt you.

Like YAHG said, a village with skilled farmers and cooks will live a good life, while with missmanagement a village will starve. That's the way it should be.

The seed situation on the other hand...

Not to go off topic too much, but the nearly invisible seeds are horrible clutter all over villages, not just near farms. Mostly you can't even tell you have them in your hand, untill you try to pick something up, and can't.

I was thinking maybe have the seeds disappear, or even better: have them dissapear after an epoch, with a chance of growing the wild variant of the plant on the spot. Would kill off seeds that sit idle too long, while also not being entirelly useless.

I always thought the game seemed really fit for a mobile platform.

If it had all the features of the original game, played well and got regular updates 20 bucks would seem like a steal. Personally however I'd never pay more than 3 bucks for a mobile app.

Any amount I'd pay would have to come under the assurance that you've made right by jason though.