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Author Topic: Get rid of vertical take-off and landing except for very small creatures.  (Read 6351 times)

GoblinCookie

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At the moment creatures of any size seem to be able to take off and land instantly.  This means that very large flying creatures can behave in a very unrealistic way, while they should be able to dive-attack their targets from above without ever actually touching the ground they should *not* be able to land and then instantly take flight again as they fancy.  Instead they should have to run first, potentially risking attacks from their enemies. 

This would work by giving a flying creature a take-flight % which rises as the creature runs but also as the creature falls.  The bigger the creature is, the slower it's take-flight rises with the intended consequence that flying creatures that are large find it difficult to move between ground and air rapidly.  Creatures that are small enough would always have 100% take-off and would be able to flitter between ground and air as they please like pigeons do in RL. 
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Evil One

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At the moment creatures of any size seem to be able to take off and land instantly.  This means that very large flying creatures can behave in a very unrealistic way, while they should be able to dive-attack their targets from above without ever actually touching the ground they should *not* be able to land and then instantly take flight again as they fancy.  Instead they should have to run first, potentially risking attacks from their enemies. 

This would work by giving a flying creature a take-flight % which rises as the creature runs but also as the creature falls.  The bigger the creature is, the slower it's take-flight rises with the intended consequence that flying creatures that are large find it difficult to move between ground and air rapidly.  Creatures that are small enough would always have 100% take-off and would be able to flitter between ground and air as they please like pigeons do in RL.

Well, actually in most lore creatures such as dragons can launch directly into the air (this is due to the fact that they simply aren't built for running).

Perhaps Toady could add a 'take off and landing' speed tag to flying creatures, and any flying creature without one can VTOL.
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Demonic Gophers

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I think that would actually be less realistic, rather than more so.  Birds aren't like airplanes - they don't depend on air speed to get lift.  A lot of large birds prefer to save energy by gliding when they can, and will use updrafts to get more elevation, but they still rely on flapping to take off.  I know ravens don't run to get off the ground, and I don't think things like eagles and condors do either.  Many waterbirds 'run' in the water to get high enough to take off, and some ground-dwelling birds like quail will start running away, then take off if they decide they need more speed, but I can't think of anything that runs on the ground in order to build up speed for flight.

Large birds certainly need more time and effort to get off the ground, and I'd support some sort of takeoff delay, but I don't think it makes sense to link it to running.  I would love to see soaring added, and large fliers leaping from trees and cliffs to get into the air.
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GoblinCookie

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Well, actually in most lore creatures such as dragons can launch directly into the air (this is due to the fact that they simply aren't built for running).

Perhaps Toady could add a 'take off and landing' speed tag to flying creatures, and any flying creature without one can VTOL.

In most lore dragons have four legs rather than two legs.  Having four limbs is a necessity for a very large flying creature, the largest flying creature ever to have existed, a pterodactyl walked on it's wing joints when it was on the runway so as to pick up enough speed to take-off.  Ironically, despite the evolutionary problem of actually ending up with a winged four-legged vertebrate creature the 4-legged D&D creature might be able to fly but the Game of Thrones 2-legged dragon would not. 

I cannot think of any lore that actually says that dragons have VTOL, it tends to be that some media (Skyrim perhaps) depicts them that way, probably because they are cooler that way, or they did not know the limitations a large flying creature is under, or they thought the dragon would never realistically be able to fly anyway etc. 

I think that VTOL should be a tag in it's own right and the requirements for a creature flying should be worked out by the game automatically.

I think that would actually be less realistic, rather than more so.  Birds aren't like airplanes - they don't depend on air speed to get lift.  A lot of large birds prefer to save energy by gliding when they can, and will use updrafts to get more elevation, but they still rely on flapping to take off.  I know ravens don't run to get off the ground, and I don't think things like eagles and condors do either.  Many waterbirds 'run' in the water to get high enough to take off, and some ground-dwelling birds like quail will start running away, then take off if they decide they need more speed, but I can't think of anything that runs on the ground in order to build up speed for flight.

Large birds certainly need more time and effort to get off the ground, and I'd support some sort of takeoff delay, but I don't think it makes sense to link it to running.  I would love to see soaring added, and large fliers leaping from trees and cliffs to get into the air.

The exact same laws of physics govern birds and govern airplanes.  The reason that most birds can vertical takeoff is because most are very small, small enough for VTOL.  There is a reason why this is the case, VTOL is a massive advantage for a creature to keep while the advantages of getting slightly larger are not very great in comparison. 

As a result the large birds that cannot VTOL tend to be birds that either spend pretty much all their time in the air or birds that spend pretty much all their time on the ground. 
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Vattic

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Poor dragons thwarted again by harsh reality.

Some birds may require water to land on like swans.

Would dropping from cliffs and trees help or would size limit that kind of thing too?
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GoblinCookie

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Poor dragons thwarted again by harsh reality.

Some birds may require water to land on like swans.

Would dropping from cliffs and trees help or would size limit that kind of thing too?

Rocs have it worse than dragons.

As I understand it there has to be a drop of a certain size and the bigger the creature the bigger the drop has to be.  If a dragon tried to hurl itself off a tree it will likely go crunch on the ground but if a dragon hurled itself off a cliff it would be able to take flight. 
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Evil One

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Well, actually in most lore creatures such as dragons can launch directly into the air (this is due to the fact that they simply aren't built for running).

Perhaps Toady could add a 'take off and landing' speed tag to flying creatures, and any flying creature without one can VTOL.

In most lore dragons have four legs rather than two legs.  Having four limbs is a necessity for a very large flying creature, the largest flying creature ever to have existed, a pterodactyl walked on it's wing joints when it was on the runway so as to pick up enough speed to take-off.  Ironically, despite the evolutionary problem of actually ending up with a winged four-legged vertebrate creature the 4-legged D&D creature might be able to fly but the Game of Thrones 2-legged dragon would not. 

I cannot think of any lore that actually says that dragons have VTOL, it tends to be that some media (Skyrim perhaps) depicts them that way, probably because they are cooler that way, or they did not know the limitations a large flying creature is under, or they thought the dragon would never realistically be able to fly anyway etc. 

I think that VTOL should be a tag in it's own right and the requirements for a creature flying should be worked out by the game automatically.


In general, Dragons are supposed to have incredible strength and simply leap upwards or at an angle then use their wings to achieve flight (perhaps the substance that allows them to breath fire is also lighter than air)... D&D, skyrim, Drakan, hell pretty much every lore or game with dragons in it has them able to launch upwards, usually either due to sheer strength or magical nature.

In addition to which, this is Dwarf Fortress, where you can power a water wheel attached to a pump by the water it itself is moving... Reality doesn't enter into it!
« Last Edit: June 04, 2015, 08:13:02 am by Evil One »
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Demonic Gophers

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The exact same laws of physics that govern birds and airplanes also govern helicopters.  Helicopters are bigger than birds, so by your stated reasoning they must lack VTOL capabilities.  They don't.  Helicopters are not airplanes.  They move their rotors independently from the airspeed of the vehicle as a whole.  This allows them to generate lift even if they are completely motionless in the air.  Birds can also move their wings independently from the animal's airspeed.  If you make a working model airplane the size of a pigeon, it won't be able to take off straight up like a pigeon.  A magical bird the size of a passenger jet would not have to run across a flat surface holding its wings straight out until it got enough speed to glide into the air, although normal flesh and bone might not be able to take the forces required for it to fly the way real birds do.

Here is a brief video showing a condor taking off.  It starts on a small rock, flaps heavily to get into the air and build height and speed, then glides away once it's moving fast enough to soar.  It does not appear to run across the ground before getting airborne.  Condors are among the largest living birds that fly on a regular basis.  Ground dwelling birds that have a limited and rarely used capacity for flight may not get into the air as effectively as birds that take off and land frequently, but most such birds are smaller than condors, not larger.  If you have support for the position that large fliers must, because of their size, run across the ground in order to get into the air, then I'd be happy to see it.  Comparing them to fixed-wing aircraft isn't going to convince me.

I would support the potential for requiring a creature to build up a certain speed before adopting specific gaits, though.  If a creature had a minimum speed that it couldn't reach by jogging required for all its flying gaits, then it would have to run to take off.  I do not think this would be more realistic for all large fliers.
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NW_Kohaku

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Birds are more maneuverable than one would expect.  I have a bird feeder hanging off my kitchen/diningroom window, and when there is a line to get into that thing, the birds will outright hover for a couple seconds before deciding to fly vertically to land on the roof of the feeder.  (And no, they're not hummingbirds.) When birds splat into the window entirely, they're capable of recovering quickly and outright flying backwards before spinning in midair to reorient themselves before flying forwards or nearly directly upwards to pick a place to land.

The primary limiter on flight in birds is not maneuverability, but strength and stamina.  Hovering consumes far more calories than gliding or wing beating to move mostly forwards. 

I remember seeing several works that show how small songbirds (like a robin) have pectoral muscles that, on a human-sized frame, would be like having pecs out 5 to 7 feet from your sternum, completely blowing any body builder away.  They flap infrequently because their body can't store but so much energy, and their dense muscles are prone to overheating if used for so long, so they flap relatively short wings with tremendous strength and speed to gain some positive altitude, then rest their wings and descend in a pattern that creates a sine-curve-like flight path. 

Medium-sized birds (like pigeons, or yes, hummingbirds) flap at a continuous pace.

Large birds, meanwhile, have small muscles proportional to other birds (but still larger than the most musclebound human bodybuilder) and, like a weight lifter pressing the absolute limits of their ability in a bench press, can only flap a few dozen times before they wear their muscles down and need to rest.  Hence, they prefer to glide over updrafts to save strength between periods where they need to beat their wings. 

That isn't to say that a bird can't fly more-or-less vertically, at least for a short time, but that it taxes its strength to a degree that it prefers not to.  (Keep in mind, even those slow, cumbersome hawks or falcons are capable of flying upside down for a period to wrestle with other birds while mid-air, and crows being chased by other nesting birds will break from flying position to start snipping at the chasing bird with its beak before going back to flapping its wings to stay aloft.)

Beyond that, many fliers in this game larger than mundane birds are explicitly magical.  A flying quadruped FB with no wings just spits (syndrome-laden spit) on your laws of physics. 



But more to the point, any coding in the flight pathing is more due to the unfinished nature of the game and its very, very overtaxed, suboptimal pathfinding system for fliers or swimmers.  (And now climbers, as well, as evidenced by the significant drop in FPS whenever a climber starts trying to climb to targets.)

DF largely seems to handle non-ground-based pathing via floodfill, which is generally treated as less of a problem by simply making birds fly to points relatively close to their current location, and generally picking destinations at random.  Flying creatures that are deliberately pathing to a position inside your fortress (like flying FBs or clowns) are a significantly greater tax upon your FPS.  This is also why domesticated flight-capable birds just plain stop flying when tamed and can start adding up to larger fortress populations. 

What you need to do is solve pathfinding (and good luck, pathfinding has been a major topic for as long as the forums have existed) and the rest of this is probably already something Toady has already considered.
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GoblinCookie

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[quote author=Evil One link=topic=151166.msg6276946#msg6276946 date=1433423349
In general, Dragons are supposed to have incredible strength and simply leap upwards or at an angle then use their wings to achieve flight (perhaps the substance that allows them to breath fire is also lighter than air)... D&D, skyrim, Drakan, hell pretty much every lore or game with dragons in it has them able to launch upwards, usually either due to sheer strength or magical nature.

In addition to which, this is Dwarf Fortress, where you can power a water wheel attached to a pump by the water it itself is moving... Reality doesn't enter into it![/quote]

The reason that dragons in lots of games can VTOL is because the makers of the games did not understand or care about the basic principles involved when they made the game.  There is usually no lore that explicitly states that this is the case that dragons can VTOL only game-play mechanics in some games. 

Incidentally it happens that dragons/wyverns in Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights cannot take off and always on the ground despite being able to fly in the lore.  Those games at least got the mechanics right, dragons would not be able to take flight easily, so to all intents and purposes a dragon if encountered on the ground will remain stuck on the ground.

[/quote]
The exact same laws of physics that govern birds and airplanes also govern helicopters.  Helicopters are bigger than birds, so by your stated reasoning they must lack VTOL capabilities.  They don't.  Helicopters are not airplanes.  They move their rotors independently from the airspeed of the vehicle as a whole.  This allows them to generate lift even if they are completely motionless in the air.  Birds can also move their wings independently from the animal's airspeed.  If you make a working model airplane the size of a pigeon, it won't be able to take off straight up like a pigeon.  A magical bird the size of a passenger jet would not have to run across a flat surface holding its wings straight out until it got enough speed to glide into the air, although normal flesh and bone might not be able to take the forces required for it to fly the way real birds do.

Here is a brief video showing a condor taking off.  It starts on a small rock, flaps heavily to get into the air and build height and speed, then glides away once it's moving fast enough to soar.  It does not appear to run across the ground before getting airborne.  Condors are among the largest living birds that fly on a regular basis.  Ground dwelling birds that have a limited and rarely used capacity for flight may not get into the air as effectively as birds that take off and land frequently, but most such birds are smaller than condors, not larger.  If you have support for the position that large fliers must, because of their size, run across the ground in order to get into the air, then I'd be happy to see it.  Comparing them to fixed-wing aircraft isn't going to convince me.

I would support the potential for requiring a creature to build up a certain speed before adopting specific gaits, though.  If a creature had a minimum speed that it couldn't reach by jogging required for all its flying gaits, then it would have to run to take off.  I do not think this would be more realistic for all large fliers.

Helicopters rotor wings move very very fast creating a vortex which is far, far stronger than anything that a living creature could conceivably create.  Small birds take flight the same way that helicopters do by moving their wings very fast to create lift, but once in flight they switch to flying rather like an airplane does by passing the air over their outstretched wings and they only use their 'helicopter' wing function if they wish to remain stationary.

Large birds on the other hand cannot do this and must take-off as airplanes do, by using a runway OR by hurling themselves off a incline (like gliders).  The condor in your video was doing the latter, the condor found itself a rock on a hillside then it jumped into the air.  It was actually falling for quite some time before it actually took flight, it's flapping was to modify the angle of the fall to keep from hitting the ground.

In game terms what this means is that in order to fly a large creature would have run along the ground and then propel itself into the air OR it would have to fall a certain number of Z-Levels before it can take flight. 
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Evil One

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In general, Dragons are supposed to have incredible strength and simply leap upwards or at an angle then use their wings to achieve flight (perhaps the substance that allows them to breath fire is also lighter than air)... D&D, skyrim, Drakan, hell pretty much every lore or game with dragons in it has them able to launch upwards, usually either due to sheer strength or magical nature.

In addition to which, this is Dwarf Fortress, where you can power a water wheel attached to a pump by the water it itself is moving... Reality doesn't enter into it!

The reason that dragons in lots of games can VTOL is because the makers of the games did not understand or care about the basic principles involved when they made the game.  There is usually no lore that explicitly states that this is the case that dragons can VTOL only game-play mechanics in some games. 

Incidentally it happens that dragons/wyverns in Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights cannot take off and always on the ground despite being able to fly in the lore.  Those games at least got the mechanics right, dragons would not be able to take flight easily, so to all intents and purposes a dragon if encountered on the ground will remain stuck on the ground.

Okay firstly, in D&D lore it has been remarked that "Dragons shouldn't be able to fly (but they are among the fastest flyers in the whole world)"... They're MAGICAL creatures, which doesn't give a fig about principles other than its own.

And the single solitary reason that dragons/wyverns in BGS 1&2 and Neverwinter Nights cannot take off is nothing to do with them getting the mechanics right and simply because the game engine wouldn't support flight... Hell even birds can hardly get off the ground in BG2 but Imps have no trouble at all.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2015, 01:12:27 pm by Evil One »
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nanomage

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I think this is a great idea. I proposed some stuff along these lines some time ago, in this post:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123904.msg4101989#msg4101989

Running to takeoff would complement the more general changes nicely, and also follow quite seamlessly from the mechanic where lift is proportional to speed.
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GoblinCookie

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Okay firstly, in D&D lore it has been remarked that "Dragons shouldn't be able to fly (but they are among the fastest flyers in the whole world)"... They're MAGICAL creatures, which doesn't give a fig about principles other than its own.

And the single solitary reason that dragons/wyverns in BGS 1&2 and Neverwinter Nights cannot take off is nothing to do with them getting the mechanics right and simply because the game engine wouldn't support flight... Hell even birds can hardly get off the ground in BG2 but Imps have no trouble at all.

Reference please......

We know based upon reality that a dragon would not be able to take flight easily and therefore the inability of dragons to take flight in the game is not supposed to be but due to game-play mechanics; that does not make any sense....

The presence of realism is apparently a facet of mere gameplay mechanics. 

I think this is a great idea. I proposed some stuff along these lines some time ago, in this post:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123904.msg4101989#msg4101989

Running to takeoff would complement the more general changes nicely, and also follow quite seamlessly from the mechanic where lift is proportional to speed.

One of your best ideas is the whole idea of being able to flap.  Moving for a flier is less tiring than staying still, something that is basically the opposite of how things are on the ground or in the water because it allows them to use 'airplane' mechanics rather than 'helicopter' mechanics.  The larger the creature the harder it is to for it to stay still in flight. 
« Last Edit: June 07, 2015, 07:46:24 am by GoblinCookie »
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Evil One

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Okay firstly, in D&D lore it has been remarked that "Dragons shouldn't be able to fly (but they are among the fastest flyers in the whole world)"... They're MAGICAL creatures, which doesn't give a fig about principles other than its own.

And the single solitary reason that dragons/wyverns in BGS 1&2 and Neverwinter Nights cannot take off is nothing to do with them getting the mechanics right and simply because the game engine wouldn't support flight... Hell even birds can hardly get off the ground in BG2 but Imps have no trouble at all.

Reference please......

We know based upon reality that a dragon would not be able to take flight easily and therefore the inability of dragons to take flight in the game is not supposed to be but due to game-play mechanics; that does not make any sense....

The presence of realism is apparently a facet of mere gameplay mechanics. 

As to the 'Dragons shouldn't be able to fly' that's from "The Cleric Quintet" by R.A. Salvatore, it's said by Cadderly Bonaduce as being the reason druids dislike dragons (and yes characters created by Salvatore including Cadderly, Drizzt, ETC ARE part of D&D lore).

Additionally: http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Miniature-Figurines-Tyranny/dp/B00MJ1BWYQ

Official D&D figures, note that the Dragon's are in flight.



As for D&D Dragons being magical creatures, that's how they all have innate magical ability AND why instead of only breathing fire, each dragon type breathes a unique breath attack.

In the D&D Wiki on the Black Dragon, you'll notice in the abilities by age, it lists flight as a viable ability http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Black_Dragon
« Last Edit: June 08, 2015, 03:49:20 am by Evil One »
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GoblinCookie

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As to the 'Dragons shouldn't be able to fly' that's from "The Cleric Quintet" by R.A. Salvatore, it's said by Cadderly Bonaduce as being the reason druids dislike dragons (and yes characters created by Salvatore including Cadderly, Drizzt, ETC ARE part of D&D lore).

So it is just the opinion of a person.  Just because a character exists in lore does not mean that everything he says is actually a correct statement about that world. 

Additionally: http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Miniature-Figurines-Tyranny/dp/B00MJ1BWYQ

Official D&D figures, note that the Dragon's are in flight.



As for D&D Dragons being magical creatures, that's how they all have innate magical ability AND why instead of only breathing fire, each dragon type breathes a unique breath attack.

In the D&D Wiki on the Black Dragon, you'll notice in the abilities by age, it lists flight as a viable ability http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Black_Dragon

I fail to see the relevance of particular figures depicting dragons in flight.  I am not arguing after all that dragons cannot fly, the figure of the dragon as shown in the picture would quite likely able to fly in reality because it's body is rather slim while it's wingspan is quite extensive.  Once you are in flight basically only two things matter, your wingspan compared to the total weight of your body, if your wingspan is big enough as appears to be the case for our dragon figure then you can fly. 

The limitations of flight for a large creature are quite explicitly recognized by the way that the in brackets 'average' wingspan degrades to poor and then clumsy as the black dragon gets bigger.  Since the limitations of flight for a large creature are clearly part of the mechanics, therefore there is no reason to think that there anything magical about the dragon's ability to fly as presumably that would allow them to fly equally well regardless of how big they are.

It is not 'in the lore' that dragons can take off vertically like pigeons.  The bigger a dragon is, the worse it's flying ability is; which fits the notion that dragon flight is actually governed by the normal laws of physics, thus there is no VTOL for dragons in lore unless you can prove that there is. 
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