Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sheb]

I don't know, that would add more info to store per tile. I think it'd be easier to just accelerate downward at g until you hit the ground and apply the normal collision model.

Because let's face it, as soon as airplanes are in, we're going to have a lot of crashing on the ground.

[majikero]

I think fall based death traps and the accidents associated with it will be first.

[jhxmt]

On flight (or, rather, on Z-levels): any early thoughts on how falling damage (both giving and receiving) might work?  While I love the innate quirkiness of it, the 'DF model' of falling from any height but landing on a kitten is survivable is a little bit...odd.    Wonderful for plotting escapes from high towers if you don't like cats, though.

Suggest you edit your post and JUST leave this intact.  Ignore the troll, continue constructive conversation.

Yeah, sensible.  I'm normally better at avoiding things like that.  Good call, edited.

I think the best way to handle falling damage would be to measure vertical speed in feet per second (or meters or whatever) - a unit of measure smaller than a tile.  This gives more control over falling damage, as you can jump from a single story building roof easily, but jumping off a 10 story rooftop wouldn't be measured as 10z fall - it would be measured according to your ending travel speed.  This becomes most relevant when you compare to vehicles.  If a tile is split in height, you can assume that any monster can reach a tile on the same z-level, but you could add some unique quirks, like a plane flying very low at 1 foot above the ground might avoid a bear trap, and 5 feet above the ground might avoid fences.

Then you just assume a tile is 10 feet tall or so.  Standing on a flat roof on Z+1 would be a 10 foot drop.  Standing atop a table atop a flat roof would be 13 foot?  Standing on a countertop (3 foot tall?) might give you a melee advantage to enemies who are on the floor.  Measuring the current height of creatures would allow for some interesting ideas, but might be too much effort.

That's a neat system - although it feels like there's a bit of a danger of 'scope creep' if you start wanting to define 'sub-tile heights' of various objects (e.g. the cabinet in your example).  But I guess that'd be where you draw the line...as you say, there's limited return in defining the 'height' of all creatures, but it might be worthwhile to define the 'height' of a table.

Having that granularity would seem to help when working out fall damage, yes.  Although the counterargument would be that once you've got Z-levels you've already got a unit of height measurement (1 tile), so why go to the effort of splitting that into ten individual feet (for example), when you could just use the tile height itself to calculate an (admittedly less accurate but easier) impact velocity?

</devil's advocate> 

[Girlinhat]

Because let's face it, as soon as airplanes are in, we're going to have a lot of crashing on the ground.

Reminds me of an old quote from the Kerbal Space Program beta.  I appeared saying "Let's make a dwarven challenge!" and someone replied, "Oh god Bay12 is here.  Next they'll be building digging machines as challenges!  Of course, with my crash rate, many of my 'rockets' would cound as 'digging machines'..."

This was back when we only had like 2 engine types and 1 solid booster type.  Lots of hardcore rocketeering...

[CognitiveDissonance]

Can we at least get a balloon flight?

I read that as "Water balloon fight" for a second. Would make for some interesting combat options...

I'm sorry, did someone say Acid Balloon Fight, or Zombie Pheronome Balloon Fight?

[beorn080]

-snip-

Blimps would be awesome. Especially if we can fill them by setting buildings on fire/pouring sulpheric acid over a scrap heat.

For VTOL craft and helicopters, the question of feasiblity would rest on thrust vs weight, and would almost certainly need the ability to craft vehicles out of alternative materials such as wood. I'd also like, perhaps as a secret reward or something, human powered aircraft. MIT has pedal powered planes.

Don't forget in all of this that we need flying dimensional horrors as well. Perhaps some form of flying snake.

[GalenEvil]

Heheh, can you imagine meeting a Flaming Eye while flying around, not noticing, and continuing on a long flight? I agree we'll need some more flying monstrosities to go with flying whenever it ends up being implemented.

[Girlinhat]

Not too many flying monsters everywhere, I hope.  The thing about flying is, zombies can't reach you, which is important.  A few 'gliders' or 'jumpers' would be decent, but there shouldn't be so many that flying becomes dangerous.  Floating over the horde should still be a viable way to survive.

At the same time, ant nests, wasp nests, and large cities should have enough flying critters to make travel difficult, because certain high-danger areas should become no-fly zones.

[BigD145]

Not too many flying monsters everywhere, I hope.  The thing about flying is, zombies can't reach you, which is important.  A few 'gliders' or 'jumpers' would be decent, but there shouldn't be so many that flying becomes dangerous.  Floating over the horde should still be a viable way to survive.

At the same time, ant nests, wasp nests, and large cities should have enough flying critters to make travel difficult, because certain high-danger areas should become no-fly zones.

Jumping spiders 4 feet tall? Now that's going to be a long jump. 3-4 vertical z-levels worth.

[azmodean]

Folding vehicles
It's fairly rudimentary right now, I added a "folded bicycle" item that when activated spawns a regular bicycle at your location.  To keep the code simple I disallow modifications to the resulting bicycle except changing the tires and repairing components.  The resulting bicycle has an extra vehicle menu entry that folds it back up into the item.  They spawn... oops, nowhere, need to fix that.  Now that I think of it I should also add a crafting recipe to make the thing.  It weighs 20lbs and takes up 80 volume (whatever THAT is), so it's extremely unweildy, but not too big to throw in the trunk of another vehicle.
At some point I'm going to refine it to serialize the list of components so that you can make modifications to it that will be persistent across folding/unfolding, the current version only saves the HP of the components so you don't get a whole new bicycle every time you do a fold/unfold cycle on your.. cycle.
Eventually I'll see about expanding this to handle arbitrary vehicles, so you can have a little fold-up go-kart you stash in a trunk or something, will probably require you to use "folding frame" components or something to link things together, and have a weight limit.

Giving players tools
Yea, this is how I think of it, I try to make the various things I add make sense and interact with each other properly, and then players go nuts with it and do unexpected stuff, and if the interactions were structured properly, cool things happen.

Falling
Actually we'll be tracking terrain/furniture/monster height for stealth purposes <_<
So sub-tile resolution might get factored in, but really that only matters if you've only fallen a tile or two.  Falling 2.5 vs 2 tiles is one thing, but the results of falling 5.5 tiles vs 5 is going to be indistinguisable.  And there really isn't a "collision system" per se, when you get flung from a car or by a explosion or monster, it does a set of calculations, but I'm not at all sure they're sensible in any way.  I think the more interesting question is going to be what you fall on.  Definitely have to make sure to get falling onto the roof of a car... right.... cars will have roofs... that you can stand on. Have to keep that in mind.

Not too many flying monsters everywhere, I hope.  The thing about flying is, zombies can't reach you, which is important.  A few 'gliders' or 'jumpers' would be decent, but there shouldn't be so many that flying becomes dangerous.  Floating over the horde should still be a viable way to survive.

At the same time, ant nests, wasp nests, and large cities should have enough flying critters to make travel difficult, because certain high-danger areas should become no-fly zones.

Jumping spiders 4 feet tall? Now that's going to be a long jump. 3-4 vertical z-levels worth.

Who said it was just going to be up?  Giant spiders and their giant webs...
But yea, mostly I think the main danger you'd experience when flying is... flying.

[beorn080]

Not too many flying monsters everywhere, I hope.  The thing about flying is, zombies can't reach you, which is important.  A few 'gliders' or 'jumpers' would be decent, but there shouldn't be so many that flying becomes dangerous.  Floating over the horde should still be a viable way to survive.

At the same time, ant nests, wasp nests, and large cities should have enough flying critters to make travel difficult, because certain high-danger areas should become no-fly zones.

Yes, zombies can't reach you. But, every biome has its dangers. Flying should be reasonably safe, but there should still be issues. Near a large city with tall buildings, I can see zombies deciding to jump at you, not to mention lobbed shots from spitters and shocker zombies. But, there should be something. Maybe some form of dragon, though that is cliched. Jabberwok style bird maybe?

[Mephansteras]

But yea, mostly I think the main danger you'd experience when flying is... flying.

As my hang gliding instructor used to say - Being up in the air is pretty safe. It's when you come back down that things tend to get ugly.

[Girlinhat]

Not too many flying monsters everywhere, I hope.  The thing about flying is, zombies can't reach you, which is important.  A few 'gliders' or 'jumpers' would be decent, but there shouldn't be so many that flying becomes dangerous.  Floating over the horde should still be a viable way to survive.

At the same time, ant nests, wasp nests, and large cities should have enough flying critters to make travel difficult, because certain high-danger areas should become no-fly zones.

Yes, zombies can't reach you. But, every biome has its dangers. Flying should be reasonably safe, but there should still be issues. Near a large city with tall buildings, I can see zombies deciding to jump at you, not to mention lobbed shots from spitters and shocker zombies. But, there should be something. Maybe some form of dragon, though that is cliched. Jabberwok style bird maybe?

Folding vehicles

I was hoping this included things like "you fold the frame down, deploying the 'board' into '2 frames'.

cars will have roofs... that you can stand on. Have to keep that in mind.

If we're going to do boats or tall vehicles, will they also have bottoms?  Or is it just assumed that any tile you build has a sturdy floor?

Maybe some form of dragon, though that is cliched.

I actually want THIS exactly.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Dragons became cliched for a reason. Though I might be slightly biased on the matter and I probably would be one of those fans where you can't ever get what I want right when it comes to them.

Edit: But just to throw it out there Pern. Thread is a danger which is not yet in the game. Also if you don't quite want that Mercedes Lackey's Dragon Jouster Series is good too.

[BigD145]

I can now imagine someone hang gliding, then a spider jumps up and takes them, leaving the hang glider... gliding.

Big spider webs stretched between skyscrapers.