One Hour One Life News

I have finally made it through all of the reproducible code issues that have been reported. There are two big changes that you will notice.

First, the web-based photos interface now allows you to go back through the entire history of 3425 photos that have been taken by players over the past four years in the game. You can browse these photos here:

http://photos.onehouronelife.com/server.php?action=front_page

Bear in mind that taking a photograph in the game is no small feat, since it involves building a camera from scratch, which includes glass blowing, tempering spring steel, and silver-nitrate chemistry.

Second, there's a new /PROPERTY command, which you can use to cycle through arrows that point to each property gate that you own. This is especially useful if you inherit distant property, because the temporary arrow that you receive goes away after 60 seconds. But this will also be useful for managing property generally.

There were several other small fixes, including some missing curse logging when not cursing by name, and a long-sought-after fix for mouse positioning on ultra-wide monitors. If you have suffered from fullscreen issues on an ultra-wide monitor in the past, it should be fixed now. Please let me know if you're still having trouble.

There is one remaining open code bug, for a horse cart duplication issue that I haven't been able to reproduce yet. Hopefully someone can shoot a video of this happening.

I've been going through all the reported issues this week.

Some highlights: Indoor bonus fades gradually instead of suddenly when doors are opened and closed. Leadership and property are no longer inherited across great distances (if the fittest heir is far away) if there are less-fit heirs close by. Partially-used strong skewers no longer make fewer balls of rubber dough. And the big one: if you put 21 fully-loaded banana backpacks in the delivery truck, it doesn't completely break the game anymore. And yeah, that one is kindof a funny story...

After an extended break to focus on other aspects of life, I'm getting back into the swing of things this week by posting a small update, mostly to exercise the update machinery and make sure it's all still working. A triple-platform, 23-server, Steam-synced, native-binary and common content automated build process involves a lot of moving and somewhat fragile parts. I hit a few snags along the way, but got everything ironed out, which should mean smoother sailing with updates going forward.

This update does two relatively trivial things:

First, natural tarry spots now automatically block the spot to their left with a temporary gas vent, preventing griefers from building ancient objects in those spots. They were doing this way out in the wilderness, in anticipation of civilization wanting to settle there in the future. These gas vents clear up as soon as oil is struck in the neighboring tarry spots, allowing advanced oil machinery with pipes that run to the left.

Second, transitions in the editor now have a comment field, allowing notes to be added about more complex and special-purpose object transitions. Coming back after a long time away, there are a lot of complex transitions (like for water that moves through pipes) that could have used comments to help guide future content editors (including my future self).

Comments occur in transition files on the second line (the old files only contained a single line), so hopefully this doesn't mess up third-party parsing tools too much, but if bugs arise in third-party tools, check out how they're parsing transition files.

Tighten up your
riding laces.
Fear shall smear
across their faces.
Tarr pit north
one hundred paces.
Gallop off and
to the races.

Leave them t'wonder
where their face is.

Headless specter
nightly flies.
Deaf to all their
whimp'ring cries.
Shining treasure
somewhere lies
under roiling
Nw'England skies.

Hidden cache
just out of view.
Through real world
you can pursue.
Every head
you sever through.
yields the thief
another clue.

What's not wrong
may not be right.
Many seekers
have to fight.
Study map
by dying light.
Last clue flies on
Hall'ween night.

I'm working through the list of reported bugs.

When picking the fittest follower to inherit a leadership position, exiled followers are no longer considered. Special biome/homeland boundaries no longer line up with ley lines for natural springs. Multiple DING messages, occurring at the same time (or in quick succession) are now queued, giving you a chance to read each one in turn. This means that if you inherit both leadership and ownership at the same time, you'll hear about both. A victim's fleeing emote is correctly preserved when they step in and out of a bad biome. The language specialist family is no longer accidentally fertile outside their homeland band, to the far north or far south. A gap has been added between the desert and jungle bands, since having those bands abut each other creates an impassable barrier for folks who get sick in both. And finally, the second phase of the tutorial has been re-designed somewhat to make it less confusing for new players.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to report these issues. I can't fix them if I don't know about them.

Functionality issues can be reported here (like bugs or glitches in the client or server logic):

https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/issues

Content issues can be reported here (like if an object should be containable, but isn't):

https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLifeData7/issues