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### Topic

#### Chunks of dirt for street projects

Did anyone notice, during the last test, that patches of dirt had been almost uniformly turned into dirtless holes? I think I know why.
Several street projects required chunks of dirt. The only way you get them is to use a shovel to dig into a patch of dirt. This gives you a few chucks of dirt, and leaves the patch as a dirtless hole.
Several street projects that I joined were stuck waiting for a large number of chucks of dirt. A dozen people (or more) had quickly contributed everything needed to the project, up to the chunks of dirt. Then they just stood there, waiting for someone to bring dirt. A few people scoured the adjoining regions for patches and (finally!) brought back enough dirt. And then, the waiting zombies ground and meditated and did whatever in order to complete the street.
So let me condense this: once I got to a street project, it was waiting for dirt. It could wait like that for hours. Once the dirt arrived, the project would be completed in seconds.
So I think there's a math problem here, and an ecology problem.
The math problem is: given the number of dirt chunks needed for the number of open street projects, and given the refresh rate of dirt patches in reasonably nearly regions, how long does it take to complete a street project? How does that compare to the total time to complete the project? If the former is, as I suspect, almost the same as the latter, then every street project will, on average, always be waiting for dirt. That's boring and should be fixed.
Perhaps more importantly, there is an ecological problem. Dirt patches only exist in regions in which they have not been planted, that is, regions in which trees are not growing in them. Once a tree is growing in a patch, the only way (I think?) that it reverts to a treeless patch is if the tree is not sufficiently petted and watered. But there is a strong incentive for lower-level players to pet and water every tree in sight, so that's not going to happen.
So there will, it seems, be fewer and fewer patches without trees. And folks who want to contribute to street projects will become more and more greedy in digging dirt from those tiny few patches that remain.
So, dear devs, you seem to have created a conflict that will ultimately be resolved on the side of the tree planters and limit the creation of new regions. I would suggest that it would be clever if the resources required to create new regions were renewable, which patches are, ultimately, not.

Posted 23 months ago by Plurp | Permalink

### Replies

- You're right on the nose with this post. There weren't many new people this test since there were no invites so there was a lot more dirt than usual. I donated about 400 dirt to one project because I had been saving it up for a day and a half (from my regular harvesting). There either needs to be less dirt needed per project or an area where dirt is available exclusively for mining purposes.
  Posted 23 months ago by Johnny | Permalink
- the ecology problem is a good one. it creates a problem that people need to get together to solve as a community.
  when the last test session first started, i and quite a few other project oriented players noticed the amount of dirt needed. we used the new streets group, and to a more limited extent the help channel, to focus all street building activity on dirt collecting, to collect as much dirt as possible without disturbing the later influx of new players looking to plant stuff.
  after most of the patches were planted, strategies for finding dirt were concocted and shared. for example, the residential quarter streets all have patches, but very rarely are they planted, so word was sent out to focus digging on residential streets.
  ultimately i think players can sort out the ecological solutions.the most obvious one is for people to agree not to plant in streets that have active projects [and perhaps immediately adjacent streets]. that way all the dirt can be harvested right there on the project site, and the rest of the world wouldn't be littered with dug up patches unsuitable for planting. this sort of long term community agreement is probably impossible during the short testing windows we currently have, however.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- Striatic: that's a great solution, and I love the cooperative aspect of it! I wonder, though, if it scales. If there's an incentive to plant every patch that exists, and new unplanted patches only appear in new streets, how do we get enough dirt to make the next set of new streets?
  Posted 23 months ago by Plurp | Permalink
- My house is in lenethsome lift and i just ran ouround the 4 blocks in my quarter - evewry block has 4-5 open patches so i went from one block to the next and by the time i got back they had all respawned. I donated a few hundred dirt in a few hrs work and then i got bored and other ppl were donating so a few min after i quit the dirt for the that project was done. Dirt respawn really isnt very long.
  Posted 23 months ago by Cap'n Bob | Permalink
- "how do we get enough dirt to make the next set of new streets?"
  every new street has fresh patches that can be harvested for dirt until they are planted.
  so you build streets to get dirt to build streets to get dirt to build streets to get dirt to build streets.
  it scales because the only agreement that players need to make with each other is fairly simple and scales with the number of projects available. the agreement being not to dig holes on streets without projects and not to plant trees on streets with projects.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- and as Cap'n Bob points out, dirt respawn times are pretty good, so the real problem is search and transport. so long as the street with the active project isn't planted and can be mined for dirt, search and transport aren't issues.
  even gives the "zombies" something to do right there on the work site while waiting for other stuff to show up.
  only issue is getting the tree planters to lay off streets with active projects .. but that's such a low percentage of the total streets that surely they would be reasonable and lay off. notes could also be left out on the project street reminding people not to plant until the project is completed.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- But what about projects extending from established streets? Kill off all the trees? Seems antithetical to growing the giants vision.
  Maybe we need alternate sources of resources like dirt that don't conflict with other activities like planting.
  The idea that popped into my head is a nice tall area in Groddle Heights. On one side you have a tricky bit of jumping to climb up to the top, the other side is a big mudslide. When you slide down all open slots in your pack fill up with dirt. Now think of the conga line we could get going through that.
  My other thought to rebalancing the projects is that instead of gathering a bunch of resources and then doing a whole bunch of work all at once, make it more incremental so people can be doing both at once. The project needs 600 units of hoeing for completion, and each unit of hoeing becomes available when 3 chunks of dirt are donated. Then the time/energy/credit need to be balanced so that gathering and working are evenly rewarded.
  Posted 23 months ago by Nill | Permalink
- "But what about projects extending from established streets? Kill off all the trees? Seems antithetical to growing the giants vision."
  just let them die.
  it isn't antithetical to the giants' vision, whatever that is, since ultimately you end up with more trees as a result because you build streets faster and the additional streets support additional trees. that, and trees were going to die anyway. it's just scooping up some dirt before you re-plant, and is in the service of many more trees in the long run.
  i guess the developers could come up with a non-conflicting source of dirt, but then there'd be less of a challenge in managing growth versus maintaining existing resources.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- "only issue is getting the tree planters to lay off streets with active projects .. but that's such a low percentage of the total streets that surely they would be reasonable and lay off. notes could also be left out on the project street reminding people not to plant until the project is completed"
  I doubt players will stop to read notes when they are busy trying to complete tree planting, sapling petting quests. Or even those just wanting to tend patches. During the last test there were several people in help chat trying to find patches to plant beans in. Which probably suggests there were many more silent people with the same issue.
  The dirt gathering, barnacle scraping, guano collecting requirements of street projects are obviously there as a break on expansion. This last test there seemed to be less people interested in gathering these resources. Once or twice I'd go looking for dirt patches and instead found something else to do. I bet I wasn't the only one.
  Posted 23 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- "This last test there seemed to be less people interested in gathering these resources."
  naw. i've never seen so many people surround a project at completion as there were this test when we opened up the seam streets. and i've never been in a barnacle scraping party larger than the one i was in last test.
  so you're demonstrably incorrect on that.
  one thing you are correct about.. i did notice that there was far, far less interest in collecting guano this test then in previous tests. possibly due to the fact that it is very expensive to quickly extract guano from batterflies. it's also the one thing that couldn't be done casually while doing other things [dirt digging] or in a collaborative mode [barnacle scraping]
  "Which probably suggests there were many more silent people with the same issue."
  which is totally why you'd want to restrict the dirt digging to the project streets.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- "and i've never been in a barnacle scraping party larger than the one i was in last test."
  Which might explain some of the lag issues. There was a new reason for people to go to the marshes too, the peat quest. Perhaps we need new collaborative quests around mining?
  Posted 23 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- "Which might explain some of the lag issues."
  what lag issues?
  there were no lag issues during the scraping parties. in fact the scraping never went better. lots of people and mid-way through we got so in sync we switched from having a chat based count down system to just cueing off a designated starter's action bubble.
  got into a whole rhythm and everything.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- There were lag issues elsewhere in the test. I'm not saying these were connected with the barnacle scraping, only the devs could tell us this. I'm also not sure why the 95 pigs in Groodle Meadow were gently helped to the next plain of existence, those may have caused the lag? I don't know.
  Posted 23 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- I had lag issues during a peat party in Shimla Mirch, and horrible lag on the gnome army block (but worth it)
  Posted 23 months ago by EgIantine | Permalink
- That was a super effective barn party. Could we do dirt parties, is there the same glitch?
  Posted 23 months ago by Ani Laurel | Permalink
- bluto, there was no lag during the super large party, no lag complaints locally or in help chat during that time, and no reason to assume the party was the cause of server wide lag later on.
  i mean, unless there's some reason you'd want to assume such a thing. that might be a reason for assuming it.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- Ani, I think someone reported a different bug regarding dirt. someone would dig while the other person tended, and the end result would be a tended patch which could be dug again.
  so i dunno. maybe worth a try.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- We should work on it next test.
  Posted 23 months ago by Ani Laurel | Permalink
- No need to get tetchy, Striatic.
  alpha.glitch.com/forum/bugs...
  Posted 23 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- It will be interesting to see how this turns out. If I understand the idea correctly, we are hoping that, among the tens (?) of thousands of eventual Glitch players, not a single one will plant new trees in an area, or that not a single one will water existing trees so they die and once again become patches. I'm not clear on the mechanism by which we would even communicate that desire to all the users, much less get their agreement.
  But, as I say, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
  Posted 23 months ago by Plurp | Permalink
- Plurp, consider that if there are tens of thousands of players, there will also be many times more streets. it isn't like all ten thousand players will come pouring through the street during construction and you have to pray they won't plant anything.
  also consider that many of the new streets will be adjoining other just built streets, not existing streets, so the "waiting to die" issue wouldn't be a problem. also that trees do die despite being petted and whatnot.
  currently Notes can broadcast the desire not to plant, and we might have other ways to leave a public message on a street in the future.. but consider that if you are regularly extract dirt from the patches then the patches are rendered impossible to plant. think about it .. the player with the desire to plant would have to show up at exactly the right time, immediately after the patch refills and before the patch is dug out again. this is very unlikely, especially if the street builders are aware of the exact dirt respawn time and return to the site for every respawn to dig up the patch again.
  and even then, if a couple trees get planted in some of those patches now and again, it isn't the end of the world. you still get the benefit of the overall strategy. it will work most of the time if you want it to and that's all that matters.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink