Bases that run on the vehicle framework

[jcd]

Could we convert ALL static electrical house appliances to a special type of vehicles? (special meaning they utilize a special frame that (1) can only be paired with itself and (2) one cannot install an engine on it - lets avoid large fridges ending up in player vehicles ;))

This would be a great step towards cable-connected home appliances, no?

[Coolthulhu]

Could we convert ALL static electrical house appliances to a special type of vehicles?

You mean just ovens and fridges or also tiny stuff like lamps?
For ovens and fridges it would make sense, as furniture doesn’t have enough per-instance data to adequately represent appliances, but for lamps it would be better to make them items.

[Blaze]

Now there’s an idea:

• Deconstruct fridge: Get large fridge.
• Install fridge on vehicle; works like minifridge except that it has more space, blocks movement, and uses more power.

[jcd]

[quote=“jcd, post:8, topic:11313”]Could we convert ALL static electrical house appliances to a special type of vehicles?

You mean just ovens and fridges or also tiny stuff like lamps?
For ovens and fridges it would make sense, as furniture doesn’t have enough per-instance data to adequately represent appliances, but for lamps it would be better to make them items.[/quote]

Hadn’t though of tiny stuff tbh. But roof-mounted lamps are fixed IRL. Maybe adding a ‘lamp’ furniture (floor lamp) would be a nice compromise? You’d be able to use static lamps (non-vehicular ones) but still we’d avoid having to generate a static lamp in every room.

[quote=“Blaze, post:10, topic:11313”]Now there’s an idea:

• Deconstruct fridge: Get large fridge.
• Install fridge on vehicle; works like minifridge except that it has more space, blocks movement, and uses more power.[/quote]
  That’s what i wanted to avoid
  Won’t it be too tall for a vehicle? (and if you’d also want kitchen appliance, too power hungry?)

[Blaze]

We also shouldn’t be able to install wheels with duct tape.

[Coolthulhu]

[quote=“Blaze, post:10, topic:11313”]- Deconstruct fridge: Get large fridge.

• Install fridge on vehicle; works like minifridge except that it has more space, blocks movement, and uses more power.[/quote]

Minifridge already blocks movement.
So no, not until we have a more restrictive vehicle system that lets you cram a ton of components in one space.

Maybe adding a ‘lamp’ furniture (floor lamp) would be a nice compromise?

You mean furniture furniture or vehicle pseudo-furniture?
Making it an item would work better, though. You could lift it, carry it around, power it with less hackiness etc.

[Azrad]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:13, topic:11313”]You mean furniture furniture or vehicle pseudo-furniture?
Making it an item would work better, though. You could lift it, carry it around, power it with less hackiness etc.[/quote]

That would be nice. Something like how you set up turrets. Activate lamp to set it on the floor, and you load it with batteries or something.

[Coolthulhu]

Something like how you set up turrets.

No, totally not like that. Just items, except using power from nearby vehicle through a cable rather than from its own source.

[Wally-kun]

Alternatively, you could use jumper cables and apply them to your appliance of choice. There’d have to be something that keeps track of the distance between the furniture item and whatever is generating the power.

Either way it sounds like something somewhere would need a total re-doing and that it would take a lot of work. Odds are it would be a complete replacement.

[Coolthulhu]

Either way it sounds like something somewhere would need a total re-doing and that it would take a lot of work. Odds are it would be a complete replacement.

Making ovens into a single-part vehicles that require a special jumper cable and work like kitchen units wouldn’t be that hard.
Same for fridges.

Keeping them as furniture and implementing those functions for furniture would be a lot of work, maybe except some minor hacks, like allowing said special jumper cable to act like a hotplate when on an oven tile, with the other end being connected to a vehicle with power.

Adding a “consume from vehicle” power source similar to UPS could be either hard or doable, depending on how much mugling managed to improve the old code.

[Wally-kun]

You could use something like a channel system. Activate jumper cable, apply to vehicle; attaches to the part where the battery is supposed to be. It then prompts you to pull it to the furniture you want to power. Wherever you put it, the game gives it a number (0, 1, 2, whatever) depending on whatever is already in place in the world, so as to avoid double instances or three-way connections. Wherever you connected that thing second, you get a tile that provides whatever the thing actually gives. Like a stove would provide the hotplate quality from that tile, like how a kitchen unit does. When you use it, instead of taking it out of the tool, the game checks the host vehicle’s power amount and decides if you have enough to do that task and takes the power out after.

Fridges would be weird, but it sounds doable. Just need to implement something that can apply a specific tile a temperature, and then a way to keep that particular tile loaded.

With the same logic from stoves, you could create power poles to distribute power if you feel so inclined. The game would just have to go from the buffer, to the vehicle, and calculate power that way.

I have absolutely no idea if any of this is possible from a coding standpoint, I’m just trying to work out the logic, assuming it is possible. It SOUNDS simple enough, but I have no idea.

[kevin.granade]

I think the jumper cable code already does pretty much everything we need for tethered items, because it tracks that distance kind of thing while you’re connecting the jumper cable.

All the appliances would need to be “rewired” to work with an external generator, which would be a pretty easy construction or crafting recipe that would turn the in-game item into a pseudo-vehicle so it could use the existing power distribution code.

This is all sorted out for vehicles, the only point of contention is we’re not turning everything into a vehicle in order to make use of it because one, using existing home wiring is incredibly problematic for a number of reasons, and two it would absolutely destroy game performance due to how vehicles are implemented.

[jcd]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:19, topic:11313”]I think the jumper cable code already does pretty much everything we need for tethered items, because it tracks that distance kind of thing while you’re connecting the jumper cable.

All the appliances would need to be “rewired” to work with an external generator, which would be a pretty easy construction or crafting recipe that would turn the in-game item into a pseudo-vehicle so it could use the existing power distribution code.

This is all sorted out for vehicles, the only point of contention is we’re not turning everything into a vehicle in order to make use of it because one, using existing home wiring is incredibly problematic for a number of reasons, and two it would absolutely destroy game performance due to how vehicles are implemented.[/quote]

So it is not needed to even convert appliances to ‘vehicles’, only utilize jumper cable code, add power costs to furniture and it could work?
But power cost to furniture? hmm iirc this aint simple…

[Wally-kun]

Then maybe it’s the vehicles that are the problem?

[vache]

Ovens and fridges could be converted to a vehicle style system without much hassle. This is probably the best choice because the vehicle system already has a system in place to handle wiring, power transfer, power consumption, recharging, and all those other fine things. Smaller powered furniture like lamps and whatnot could, in theory, be implemented as foldable vehicle parts, where they have to be “unfolded” (really just converted from an inventory item to an in game vehicle) to deploy, then they just be connected like other vehicles.

A system like this has been discussed for powered machinery and other tools, possibly with special part flags that ensure that certain parts can’t be removed without complete disassembly, or that those parts can’t be installed on other vehicles.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

I still think that a unified map object system can be made to work. Furniture and vehicles just have too much in common to be so different code-wise. They could exist in such a state that the game can track both as either. A vehicle that is not moving may just as well be furniture and accessed as such. A furniture object that is being moved may as well be referred to as a vehicle. It makes a lot of potential things far less complicated. Wiring, working stationary refrigerators/ovens/forges/etc, folding chairs/tables/etc. Moving sofas/beds/tables/shelves as connected entities, using furniture as frames for vehicles, building furniture into vehicles as-is, unified dragging/collision/interaction mechanics, proper weight for furniture… lots of things can be done or made simpler to use and expand on.

[vache]

Generally speaking, there is a lot more furniture than there are vehicles. Tracking all the information currently being tracked for every vehicle for every piece of furniture as well is unrealistic.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

Generally speaking, there is a lot more furniture than there are vehicles. Tracking all the information currently being tracked for every vehicle for every piece of furniture as well is unrealistic.

True, but that speaks more of how needlessly complex the vehicle tracking is. Vehicles could well be tracked as furniture-like objects when not moving. The point is a unified code base for them, not literally handling furniture the same way vehicles are now. So that they both descend from the same class and can use the same code when it comes to (the increasingly numerous) overlapping functions.

[Coolthulhu]

Smaller powered furniture like lamps and whatnot could, in theory, be implemented as foldable vehicle parts, where they have to be “unfolded” (really just converted from an inventory item to an in game vehicle) to deploy, then they just be connected like other vehicles.

I see them more like this:

[ul][li]Have lamps be items[/li]
[li]Store “attached to” value similar to jumper cables[/li]
[li]Move jumper cable tracking code (breaking off when too far etc.) to a common function[/li]
[li]When consuming power, have them consume it from the targeted vehicle instead[/li][/ul]

This code could be later on change to a tool mod, to allow using tools by connecting them to vehicle power source. This would be really useful.

I still think that a unified map object system can be made to work. Furniture and vehicles just have too much in common to be so different code-wise.

Vehicles are complex multi-part structures that fulfill multiple functions at once, track a lot of stats, perform updates per turn, are processed on load, are relatively slow to access in the code and require more complex access methods.
Furniture is a secondary terrain type, where all instances are totally identical and don’t actively perform any function.

Honestly, vehicles are more similar to monsters than to furniture.

True, but that speaks more of how needlessly complex the vehicle tracking is. Vehicles could well be tracked as furniture-like objects when not moving. The point is a unified code base for them, not literally handling furniture the same way vehicles are now. So that they both descend from the same class and can use the same code when it comes to (the increasingly numerous) overlapping functions.

I don’t see how would you achieve this merge.
There are few functions vehicles and furniture could share, but those would be mostly “has_flag”.

The unification is simply unfeasible on the basis of vehicles being instanced as objects and furniture being instanced as ID.

What do they even have in common? That they fall, can be dragged and have flags?

[Sean_Mirrsen]

It’s simple. Base the vehicle class on the furniture class. You keep thinking of vehicles as whole entities first, whereas that only counts when the vehicle is moved. As far as most features go, vehicles are just blobs of static objects with flags, parented to a single entity. You can duplicate the furniture-tracking code in vehicles, and change the “vehicle” entities so that they only handle movement and construction. As an added bonus, furniture will finally have more states than “fully intact” and “smashed into constituent parts”, because as far as code they can be single-item vehicles (like a single placed frame) and will have durability and mass. As an additional added bonus, with proper handling of static vehicles you will increase performance in cities if current vehicles are as resource-intensive as you lead me to believe. Just flag all static vehicles like you would furniture, and you’ll be able to process them regardless of whether they’re actually furniture - and when a player interacts with one you can read which vehicle it belongs to (via flag and UID), scan the surroundings for “furniture” belonging to the same vehicle, and call the constructor for your “vehicle” class with the results.

As an extra additional added bonus, there’s your implementation for “dockable” vehicles. Make vehicle go idle, flip adjacent idle vehicle’s tiles’ “parent flag” to same vehicle, activate vehicle again.