Wheelbarrow - a Simple 'Vehicle' for Transporting Goods

[Endovior]

The title says it all, really… you want the cargo capacity advantage of mobile storage, but you don’t want to worry about fuel, and hauling a bunch of crap around on the back of a bicycle seems silly. Enter the wheelbarrow; a dead-simple vehicle, just a box, a wheel, and some wooden handles. You are the engine. It’s very slow, but also very easy to build; you don’t even need a welder or anything, as you should be able to put one of these together from wood and nails. Of course, you won’t be able to mod your wheelbarrow much, since it’s you-powered, and it’s already slow speed will degrade down to nothing in short order if you start adding components. A good early solution to the inventory problem for compulsive scavengers.

[Pakislav]

But does it really have to be a vehicle?

Can’t it just be more like furniture that can be continually hauled? And faster to do so, of course.
I was just thinking about that, and having wheelbarrows, and other sorts of shopping carts and similar would be cool.

[AerialK7]

I know this sounds retarded, but, what if you ‘wear’ the wheelbarrow and itd add like 2 encumbrance to your arms and gives like 60 storage?

[Endovior]

Mechanically speaking, I think wheelbarrows make the most sense as a vehicle.

Moving it around by the furniture hauling mechanic would be appallingly terrible (shift-8 > f > target > slide > move… that’s six keys! Every single tile!), and not at all representative of a labour-saving method. If, for some perverse reason, you wanted to transport goods around by pushing a dresser down the highway, that’d be an appropriate modelling of the amount of effort, but wheelbarrows are much easier than that.

On the other hand, representing it as clothing is both way too permissive (moving a wheelbarrow takes a lot more of your concentration and effort than something you can just wear and forget… to start with, it occupies both of your hands, much like a steering wheel would), and way too limited (not only can a wheelbarrow hold an awful lot more than backpacks, it also helps to manage the weight, and clothing can only represent the former).

In terms of the vehicle representation, sure, it’s a little weird that you’d need the driving skill to push a wheelbarrow, but the same could be said for a bicycle. Furthermore, the handling issues (wobbling, etc) that you get from vehicles model wheelbarrows pretty effectively, as anyone who’s used one before will know (it’s hard to keep a one-wheeled vehicle on track properly). So yeah, I think you do in fact have to represent wheelbarrows as a vehicle, if you implement them at all.

[AerialK7]

In terms of the vehicle representation, sure, it’s a little weird that you’d need the driving skill to push a wheelbarrow, but the same could be said for a bicycle. Furthermore, the handling issues (wobbling, etc) that you get from vehicles model wheelbarrows pretty effectively, as anyone who’s used one before will know (it’s hard to keep a one-wheeled vehicle on track properly). So yeah, I think you do in fact have to represent wheelbarrows as a vehicle, if you implement them at all.

[font=georgia]Hm, maybe if it was a vehicle it would ‘wobble’ reducing speed for 2-3 tiles, and the wobble depends on how well of a driving skill you have? I dont know…because I have a stupid imagination and id think of tying a v8 engine and a seat to it and 3 more wheels. Pretty easy transport to make…Not to mention The fastest bike whats stopping us from strapping 10 v8 engines to it and making it a easy to make death machine

/Rant over[/font]

[Nopkar]

how hard would it be to code a ‘bump’ mechanic? impassible from any other side than behind it, try to step onto the barrow and ‘bump’ it forward instead (including the back angles for turning, i know a real wheelbarrow turns on a dime but maybe for balance sake make it turn wide?)

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]I still think my ideas best…A 10 engine powered wheelbarrow. Fitted with a roof and spikes and blah blah blah

/Rant over[/font]

[Endovior]

What’s stopping you? Well, wooden frames don’t exist yet, nor do engineless vehicles, so we’re obviously talking about some code mods. I’d envision that the wooden frame of a wheelbarrow simply can’t be mounted with certain components at all, and engines would be one of those components. The concept is an easy primitive transport solution, not a way to bypass the need for welding tools at the high end of vehicle mods. Once you’re able to use those tools, you might make a metal wheelbarrow of your own (heck, there’s nothing stopping metal wheelbarrows from existing already), or even using it as the base for a proper vehicle if you’re feeling ambitious, but that’s no different from the existing vehicle system.

Vehicle durability and ramming damage is a separate issue entirely, out of scope of this suggestion… but for the purposes of this suggestion, I’d add that wooden frames are much more fragile than steel ones, and do much less damage. You could, theoretically, run at a zombie and ram him with your wheelbarrow… maybe even swap out container space for mounted spikes or something to make an improvised zombie plow. It wouldn’t be very effective, though, and would quickly break.

Regarding the ‘bump’ mechanic, that’s an interesting idea, but I can’t see how that would work; a bump-type mechanic says to me it’d be like pushing around a crate or a boulder, and those aren’t multi-tile objects with sidedness.

[AerialK7]

[font=georgia]But HOW are we gonna have the transport system? Just like a normal vehicle? Then whats stopping some people from reinforcing the wheelbarrow and making it into a ‘easy to make’ death machine…I guess my imagination is just running wild and im tired xD But yeah, either way the use of wheelbarrows would be a cool idea.

EDIT: I know a weak frame would be hindering, but when I think of a wheelbarrow I think of the heavy industrial ones they use at worksites, oh well…[/font]

[Nopkar]

honestly a bicycle serves the purpose of this right now. a foot crank makes it ‘you’ powered, add a box and boom, you basically have a wheelbarrow but it has an extra wheel in back.

within the scope of the game what’s really stopping someone from throwing an engine on the bicycle and armoring it to be a death spear? nothing really, so why stop them from doing the same to a wheelbarrow?

[Endovior]

What I’m suggesting here is the possibility of a vehicle with no engine that is not made of metal. The additional purpose it fulfills over a bicycle that is not currently present in the game is that it can be made of wood, without welding tools; this is intended to be a relatively early-game option. To balance this, I’m suggesting that the things that should be mountable on a wood-frame vehicle be limited. I suppose it could more broadly be extended to vehicles with no engine generally (pushing an incomplete car down the road to your garage to have it repaired) or wooden vehicles generally (trailers and carts that could be mounted behind a normal vehicle, perhaps?), but wheelbarrows are a thing that exists, that’d be useful in a post-apocalyptic situation.

Remember that this suggestion is not intended to address the general problem of deathmachines; that balancing process, if and when, would also cover this. There’s nothing stopping you from taking a metal-frame wheelbarrow and mounting stuff on it to make it deathmachine-like, save that such a project would use the regular vehicle system, and not be something you can make with a hammer and an axe. And yeah, a heavy-duty industrial metal-frame wheelbarrow would be more readily convertible to an improvised zombie plow than would a wimpy wooden one, but it’d be a more difficult process, since you would need those welding tools.

[TheRealTenman]

[font=impact]This is a roguelike people!
We should encourage strapping large engines to basic tools!

Wooden frame or not, it should be capable of being a death machine. Motors, blades, spikes, fetus’, armour, the lot!.

As for the the crafting side of it I think yes it should be craftable from wood. For extra survival an stuff.
[/font]

[Endovior]

I shrug. It seems like it might be way too easy to tech up if you could mount engines on a wooden cart, but I suppose a fast-moving powered cart might just be hilariously fragile instead, amusing everyone by flying to pieces in horrible explosions.

Really, that’d tie into another durability suggestion mentioned earlier, to have different vehicle materials on a sliding scale of durability, with fibreglass ‘crumple zones’ being the norm for most cars, which will thus take all kinds of damage when attempting to plow through a horde. A jury-rigged wooden deathcart would thus be the same thing, only moreso; you could mount engines and spikes on a wheelbarrow to ride it into a horde, but it’d probably fall apart and explode in the process. At least it’s cheap enough that you can easily repair it. I’m not really invested in it either way, so long as the durability/damage scaling clearly favours the more expensive/advanced design.

[Nopkar]

I see what you mean now. I can get behind the idea of it, a ‘box’ mounted on a wheel and a wood frame with handles, made with nails, 2x4’s and a wheel. early game loot mover.

dunno what I was imagining but yeah, dunno how hard this would be to do though

[Ferodaktyl]

Most simple and efficient would be indeed to make it a craftable inventory item, with a volume of over 200 so you can’t actually carry it on the trenchcoat pockets and heavy enough to encumber those who will carry it in the arms, as a weapon.
Make it so it covers arms, legs and feet, adding +6 enc to each, and with a construction and mechanic requirements of 1, or something about it. It could also have a rare chance of spawning at hardware stores or farms.
An extra stat that add to the maximum weight the player can carry when the wheelbarrow is equipped , like a +200, would be extremely useful, but idk if it can be coded.

Recipe : Wood saw + hammer + bicycle wheel + nails + 2x4s,
Improved recipe : Hack saw +hammer + welder + bicycle wheel + metal sheet + pipe, mechanics +2, cons. +1, less encumbrance (4 instead of 6)

The only con that i see is that player would have to drop a shitload of items from inventory when unequipping this contraption, or in case of sudden attack.
Even better, it could have a deployable quality, that would make it a container of sorts when activated ( like the wood stove)

[Otaku]

I can see both as being viable solutions to the problem, but they both have their own drawbacks. For the vehicle side, the code would be a major problem, and the bicycle/wheelbarrow crossover might seem like the best option without editing the code. But remeber that the wheelbarrow was originally thought of to be an early looting equipment, not something advanced. As for the clothes solution, it is more iffy. I like the vehicle solution more simply because it accurately represents a problem with hands. It is nearly impossible to drive a wheelbarrow and swing a bat at the same time, but if it was clothing than this would be possible. As for the comment about having to drop it every time there is combat and dropping everything else as well, well. My solution to that (if I could code) would be a DF approach, if you are carring antibiotics, than it is not in your inventory, it is inside your jeans, which is inside your inventory. The whole pattern would be repeated with your 2 backpacks and what ever else you are wearing. But to code that there would need to be a serious effort, one that I can’t do (read, try to have someone else do it for me)

[Williham]

Wheelbarrows, shopping carts, etc; these things have been discussed before, and the general sentiment is that it’s a PITA to code as it stands right now.

That’s not to say it won’t happen in the future, but for now, the bike is probably your best bet.

[Hyena_Grin]

It would definitely be nice to have this sort of thing in the game. Especially for stuff like cutting trees - moving all those logs can take forever.

I dislike the ‘worn item’ concept and the haulable furniture idea would be less bad if there were an easier way to do it (and if moved furniture didn’t erase stuff beneath it like doors). I like the vehicle concept the best. I’m not sure why it would be difficult to do, but I assume there’s some hard-wired mechanics for vehicles that wouldn’t really make this viable in a way that is consistent with how we think of wheelbarrows working. That is a shame.

[Paquito]

How about instead of it being a “worn” item, a wheelbarrow/cart/whatever be a “wielded item”. That would solve the problem of not wanting to give the player the option of attacking or doing any other action with his/her hands while it’s equipped.

Perhaps, this class of items can only be equipped, or left on the ground.

[kevin.granade]

The problem with anything putting the item in your inventory is twofold, weight and map display.
We’d have to set up some wacky override where the item only reports a fraction of it’s weight, but then that would likely lead to weird stuff like being able to throw a wheelbarrow with a V8 engine in it across the street, unless we have more overrides… it turns into a mess quick. For map display, well if you’re hauling around a cart or something you want it visible on the map IMO, so now you need some pseudo-entity to make it display.

I’ve been pondering this for a while, and I think I have a solution that will keep everything clean, we’ll see. Basically you establish a “grab” on a vehicle. Having the grab established encumbers you based on the wieldiness of the vehicle based on weight and other properties of the vehiclle, and if that encumbrance goes over a certain threshold it’s disallowed (no dragging around your entire car, sorry).

Along with this there will be new vehicles particularly suited to this, like wheelbarrow/shopping cart/sledge. That part is dead simple.

Can MAYBE extend it to furniture and items, but keeping a persistent link between the player and an item has complications, and furniture has the issue of having weird interactins with items in its square.