The Dozer/Plough would be a welcome addition for either pushing other wrecks out of the way or just smashing through them.
Should weigh a ton and function better at lower (10-20mph) speeds.
Some kind of tow/hitch/winch system would be cool as well.
Anything that would let us start cordoning off city blocks with wrecked cars for that lived-in apocalypse feel.
Mirrors and cameras would work similarly. For performance reasons, the game calculates what squares you can see in a big batch and writes them to a big table using a technique called shadowcasting, like so: (the @ is just there for illustration)
In a car it might look something like this:
(Car for reference, the boards “|” block sight)
0==0
|""|
+@#+
+##+
|HH|
0++0
00111111111
00111111111
11011111110
11101111100
11111111011
11111@11111
11111111111
11111111111
11100111011
11000111001
11001111100A mirror would have a facing and a width, like headlights. As a final step (after shadowcasting) when determining FOV, the code would check if you can see any mirrors, and if you can, it will project cones from the mirrors to their facing that make tiles visible if they aren’t already.
If we stick mirrors on the forward boards of the car vacing backwards at an outward angle, it’ll reveal something like:
00000000000
00000000000
00000000000
00000000000
00000000000
00011@01100
00011001100
00111001110
00110000110
01110000111
01110000111
Merging the two, you get:
00111111111
00111111111
11011111110
11101111100
11111111011
11111@11111
11111111111
11111111111
11110111111
11110111111
11111111111You still have a bit of a blind spot, but that’s normal. There might be some fixups we need to do to keep this from messing up other parts of the code, but that’s basically how it’ll work. Probably won’t allow mirror->mirror bouncing, because that could get really expensive if we’re not careful.
The only difference with cameras is the spot that’s required to be visible (the screen) might be in a different location than the spot that projects vision (the camera).
Was discussing towing/trailering just yesterday on IRC, it’s feasable, it turns out making a flatbed that can pick up cars is easier to code, go figure.
I haven’t been able to play with vehicles much yet, but being able to add ploughs would be nice… I lost one (ok, maybe a few) too many shoppingcarts to weird vehicle collisions
Hoho, are cameras already in? Sounds like it’s rather feasable. (Yes!)
If mirrors are going into cars, could we possibly see them elsewhere? (dressers & the like)
If so, the pc would be incredibly perceptive thanks to this being a turn-based game; we’d instantly be able to see what’s in every mirror in the immediate (or far) vicinity. Quite the feat.
This might present just with mirrors attached to cars alone- walking into town we’d be able to see EVERYTHING thanks to mirrors on wreckages.
Well the projected cone from a mirror would be shrunk based on your distance to the mirror, possibly exponentially. If you’re right next to a mirror you would get a more or less full view cone, but if you’re far away you’d only get a tiny one.
assuming simple squaring
normal sight distance 60
distance view cone
to mirror from mirror
1 59
2 56
3 51
4 44
5 35
6 24
7 11
8 -So there would certainly be situations where it might help you spot something, but it wouldn’t blanket the map with free vision.
If you’re being careful, you can peek around corners anyway.
The thing is that it could be abused when you are NOT in the car. Maybe it could give realism to the game, or…who knows. But it could make you able to see half of a town from a good spot with lots of cars.
A simple fix is just not make the mirrors do anything when you aren’t inside the vehicle and within LOS of the car.
Make activation part of the check to see if you’re occupying a vehicle or not. Most of the time the side and rearview mirrors are set so the driver can see around the vehicle IRL. If you walk up to a car and look at the sideview, you’re just going to see car. Those mirrors are angled in for the driver, not vanities for the world.
Well, if the cone projected by the mirror dropped off exponentially, you wouldn’t really get much benefit unless you were standing right next to a bunch of mirrors. And it probably wouldn’t be reflecting anything you couldn’t already see anyway. A car mirror really doesn’t show you anything you couldn’t see by turning around when you’re outside the car, it’s for when you’re driving and the car’s frame creates a blind spot.
Jumper Cables: Transfer electricity between vehicles.
Dome Light: Headlight are directional while dome lights are omni-directional
Brush Guard: Protect headlights from impacts.
Search Light/Flood Light: Light with a changeable direction. Maybe use the grab button to interface with it? Grab it and move away from the direction you want it to face. Other option could be examine and then aim.
Governer: Keep engines from self frying…
Oh and additional glass types for shatter resistant windshields.
Dome light sounds op.
Flood lights are kinda redundant with how effective normal headlights are.
Brush guards would be nice.
If one wants shatter-resistant windshields, the current alternative of doors works well enough.
[quote=“GrizzlyAdamz, post:31, topic:3254”]Dome light sounds op.
Flood lights are kinda redundant with how effective normal headlights are.
Brush guards would be nice.
If one wants shatter-resistant windshields, the current alternative of doors works well enough.[/quote]
Reinforced Windshields have worked wonders for me lately… XD
Reinforced windshields?
How do?
[quote=“An0n3, post:33, topic:3254”]Reinforced windshields?
How do?[/quote]
Nightly builds, rip em off the armored trucks so far
Dome lights aren’t OP. Balancing is part of the process of adding to the game. A dome light wouldn’t go anywhere near as far as a directional light.
A headlight is focused in one direction with reflective materials. Having a dome light you reduce the intensity of the light and have it shoot in all directions. That seemed like I didn’t need to explain it…
Flood lights are redundant, they are turnable lights on top of a vehicle. They exist on real vehicles. 
Crud. I have an established world already so I wont discover those.
Damage resistant glass is surprisingly easy to make. Layers of foil or transparent resin, sandwitched between sheets of glass. Some type of crude bulletproof glass should be craftable. I know, “craftable” is not a word.
How about a steam powered vehicle. Long startup times, in most respects inferior to gasoline powered cars, redeemed somewhat by plentiful and trivially accessible fuel.
I think it’d just be inferior in every way to solar- plentiful fuel? Solar is free and automatic.
The trade-off is lower performance and longer startup? Sounds like a certain alternative that already exists.
That bulletproof glass wouldn’t really be valuable- it would still fracture if you ran into a zombie. Sure, it’d stop him, but you wouldn’t be able to see out of it. Thicker, smaller-sized, slanting glass in a heavier & more extensive metal frame is better for a cataclysm survivor’s purposes.
a reinforcing cage that could be built over a windshield would be best.
if its setup so that it takes damage (and breaks off) before the windshield does, you could easily repair/replace it as you smear random monsters all over the road.
so instead of a combination item that’s a tougher glass, just an extra item that you can add to a location with a window that protects the window.
We’re throwing around ideas for reforming the vehiclle parts system on github, might be some changes that make some of thes things more practical soon.
RE: spotlight, we’d probably just add a “aim spotlight” command to the driving menu.