Boat vehicles cross over the bridge?

[Aabbcc]

what if boats treat the edge of bridges…like… a portal to the other side? So every tile that would “bump” the bridge instead moves to the other side as though there is no space inbetween the two sides of the bridge? In such a way that your boat can be half on one side and half on the other?

Apart from the problem of implementing the vehicle being split like that, there’s the issue of enemies on the bridge while the vehicle is halfway through:
Ranged enemies would be able to attack into the inside of the vehicle, grabber zombies would be able to grab you from your seat ignoring your roof and walls, or just walk into your boat, etcetera.

Teleporting into land (or into a wall with ramps) is easy to check, just see if the vehicle fits. The implementation can go from easy (the vehicle crashes into the ramp as if it were a wall) to complicated (trying to emulate how it would crash on the other side) depending on how fancy you want to make it.
check if the vehicle fits, if it does, teleport, if it doesn’t, crash it.

[Litppunk]

Yeah, it seemed simpler in my head until I started to type it out, which is why I quickly dismissed the idea myself, but left it in for brainstorming material.

[Zhilkin]

I believe bridges should be two z-levels high with lower level being on river level. And we need some ramps too.

[DeWolf]

While that would be nice at the moment vehichles cannot climb z levels.

[Zhilkin]

That is why we need ramps.

[mlangsdorf]

Ramps aren’t easy to implement: they’re basically teleporters and have all the issues of teleporters.

For instance, say you’ve got a security van (5 tiles wide, 7 tiles long) that you’re driving west at 20 mph on a road on the 0 z-level. Ahead of you is a bridge of the 1 z-level. The ramp is a line of N-S tiles that teleport the entirety of a vehicle that enters them from the east side such that the entirety of the vehicle is just past the west side of the matching ramp tiles on the bridge.

However, there’s also another security van 4 tiles west of the ramp on the bridge. How do your vehicle and the motorcycle interact? Naively putting your vehicle on the second security van is going to cause an immediate vehicle crash - and people are going to complain that they should have had time to stop. Stopping short of the second security van means half your vehicle is still on the ramp tiles - which does what? - and half of it is hanging in the air over the z-level.

There’s a bunch of interactions like that. Solutions for them need to be designed before ramps can be implemented, and a lot of the solutions are not obvious or cause additional interactions that are hard to solve, like grabbers suddenly being able to attack you because half your vehicle isn’t on the right z-level.

[Litppunk]

long term the hacky split in half vehichle on two different z levels is probably the most doable practical, and intuitive on a player level.

Short term, hacks like teleport the whole vehichle and is both water and road are the best ways to get around things, and make sections navigateable. These are just going to have to come with some kind of- look this is how it is for now, check ahead before you cross the threshold with a crashable vehicle.

tl;dr: ramps are a long term goal in my eyes, not something to just ‘pop’ into the game.

[Aabbcc]

However, there’s also another security van 4 tiles west of the ramp on the bridge. How do your vehicle and the motorcycle interact? Naively putting your vehicle on the second security van is going to cause an immediate vehicle crash - and people are going to complain that they should have had time to stop.

One way of handling this is implementing some sort of incoming crash warning message, which pops up on the message box if you’re going to crash, say, next turn.

There’s still issues, of course, like what happens when you enter from the wrong side, or what happens when you enter at an angle, or if the vehicle is too broad.

An elevator-like teleporter wouldn’t suffer from these problems, of course, since you can just enforce that the ‘elevator tiles’ only exist on one z-level at a time and just move everything in them when the elevator moves. Sadly, elevators wouldn’t really fit for bridges. Some parking garages, yes, regular buildings, yes, bridges or boats, no.

Stopping short of the second security van means half your vehicle is still on the ramp tiles - which does what? - and half of it is hanging in the air over the z-level.

Vehicle portions being able to move up or down in z-levels is probably the option that best adapts to problems naturally. There’s still issues like entering from the wrong direction or grabbers that it doesn’t solve, tho the later are a problem the current vehicle system doesn’t solve when driving diagonally.

[TheZoneWizard]

Why not do the same thing with z-level buildings for vehicle parking areas? Ignore the entire vehicle sticking partially outside when the bumper enters the first part of the building, the entire vehicle teleports inside the new space area.

[Aabbcc]

Why not do the same thing with z-level buildings for vehicle parking areas? Ignore the entire vehicle sticking partially outside when the bumper enters the first part of the building, the entire vehicle teleports inside the new space area.

Once the system is done, it could, indeed, be used for parking garages and the like. The problem is that there’s issues in how to implement it in the first place that need to be plotted out first.

[TheZoneWizard]

I understood that z-level parking garages already teleport the entire vehicle already? As I don’t play with Z-levels I was guessing this was implemented. Guess I wrong incorrect.

But teleporting the entire vehicle to a new z lev…hmmm new idea I just had.

Using Z-levels. Instead of UNDER the bridge. It would solve the problem if we have the vehicle teleport under the bridge in a new map like area similar to the way we use sewers and subway stations. Have the space under every bridge be a tunnel and keep every bridge at normal standard level. This would alleviate the bloat of programming ramps and other stuff to force a bridge to work.

[Aabbcc]

I understood that z-level parking garages already teleport the entire vehicle already? As I don’t play with Z-levels I was guessing this was implemented. Guess I wrong incorrect.

I’m mostly sure this is not implemented.

Using Z-levels. Instead of UNDER the bridge. It would solve the problem if we have the vehicle teleport under the bridge in a new map like area similar to the way we use sewers and subway stations. Have the space under every bridge be a tunnel and keep every bridge at normal standard level. This would alleviate the bloat of programming ramps and other stuff to force a bridge to work.

Not really, you’d need to do the same amount of work, since instead of a ‘ramp’ on land moving the vehicle a z-level up you have a ‘ramp’ on sea moving the vehicle a z-level down, the code would be pretty much identical.

There may be monsters down there, the boat may not fit inside, the player may have left a boat inside and is now trying to drive a new one in, etc.

Basically, it’s the same problems than in the land ramp implementation, the only difference is that it is less likely that the player will encounter them since the water tends to be emtpier, but this only means that there’ll be less bug testing from the player side of the equation.

[TheZoneWizard]

That is the point. Path of least resistance. Coding wise. It is less likely to have crap in that space and if a boat already exists. That would play out the same way as a car crashing into another car. Except worse. It would almost be certain doom. The game by default wouldn’t spawn anything down there AND we could have barge homes on the river banks + ports + docks!

[Aabbcc]

That is the point. Path of least resistance.

The problem is that it’s not the path of least resistance. There’s the same amount of resistance, it’s just harder to debug, and carries the additional issue that bridges are narrower than they are long, so long boats would be much harder to fit inside than long trucks on the bridge.

Again, the work needed is identical. If you implement one, you’ve automatically done all the coding work for the other, the only difference would be on the map files.

[TheZoneWizard]

Why not just tell people in the game when making a boat that the system has limits to the design. When you design the under-bridge z-level area. Just make that area really large to fit the maximum. So in short. No ocean liners. Just speed boats, dinghies, row boats, and private cruisers etc.

[Aabbcc]

Why not just tell people in the game when making a boat that the system has limits to the design. When you design the under-bridge z-level area. Just make that area really large to fit the maximum. So in short. No ocean liners. Just speed boats, dinghies, row boats, and private cruisers etc.

That’s just reducing the ‘reward’ for doing the work more and more: now it’s not something that can be used for elevators, bridges, parking garages and player-made underground parking, but something that works solely for under-bridge boating.

And once again, you’re reducing the amount of players that would be exposed to it, so you’re getting less bug reports, so it takes longer to go from the boat-only implementation to something that can be applied on more places in the game.

Also, what happens when you dig holes from the bridge? What happens when you build a little dock inside and start wailing up with a sledgehammer, then try to build stairs? What happens when explosives go off under the bridge and the roof colapses? If it no longer aligns with the road upstairs, these are all going to be issues.

[TheZoneWizard]

So exactly how would using ramps make more sense? You have more levels than is needed and you don’t get the same effect with an elevator anyway.

Digging holes…You end up under the bridge like the boat. Except you have water and you drown if not using some breathing system =P

Destroying the bridge is simple. You end up with holes in the bridge you cannot drive over and then you see the tiles below it.

[Mantar]

I think the only real solution is an overhaul of how vehicles are handled to place them in a special vehicle-space and then overlay them onto the world, and add some hooks to handle world<->vehicle interactions so zombies can’t grab you through the walls, and so the vehicle can be internally consistent while appearing split across separate z levels and such.
Which sounds like a lot of work.

[TheZoneWizard]

Damn you and your logicical deductions!! We want sloppy coding and hack kneed crap like that! >_<

Seriously though, this would be a lot more work, yet it would be much more ideal. That said, we had a tragic clusterfu** of the vehicle system once before. It was thankfully killed with fire and forgotten…it was enough to make you beg for bleach to dump in your eyes ;_;

[Aabbcc]

So exactly how would using ramps make more sense? You have more levels than is needed and you don’t get the same effect with an elevator anyway.

First, you have the exact same number of levels. One for the top of the bridge, one for under the bridge.
As to how ramps make more sense, I’ve already told you, repeatedly:

• It’s easier to fit a vehicle roadwise than across, so no need to mismatch map sizes as you propose and all the artifacts that introduces.
• Once the code is implemented it is identical for bridges, garages and elevators. More benefit for the game for the same amount of coding work.
• You get far more bug testing that way, so bugs get identified and solved faster.

Digging holes…You end up under the bridge like the boat. Except you have water and you drown if not using some breathing system =P

Destroying the bridge is simple. You end up with holes in the bridge you cannot drive over and then you see the tiles below it.

Except you’re proposing for the ‘under the bridge’ to be bigger than the ‘over the bridge’, so where do those holes come out? Because these two maps are not aligned.

If the map underneath is twice as big as the one above, and I dig down a square of four blocks, does that mean I have a square hole in the ceiling twice as big on the underground level? Or does it mean I have four ceiling holes spread out?
If I create four stairs on the underground, does that mean there’s only one stairs above? If I fill the entire underground with stairs, meaning I have four times more up stairs than what you could fit in down stairs aboveground, what decides where each of the extraneous stairs come out?