airports

brupje · Post by **brupje** » 03 Oct 2006 07:25

I like this game very much, but there is one thing I would really like to get improved. Being the way airports are build.

In the game I can customize almost anything, railways, roads, stations etc. But the airport is a fixed thing. It would be great to define my own airstrips/taxirunways/hangars/terminals etc. What would be the impact of developing this thing?

Bjarni · Post by **Bjarni** » 03 Oct 2006 08:37

it would be a rather big change to the code since airports are actually a somewhat complex system of blocks the planes move around in and where to place them to avoid deadlocks. Making the user design them in the game will not work well with the hardcoded moving we got in the current airports.

Firestar · Post by **Firestar** » 03 Oct 2006 09:56

while on the subject of airports, a suggestion would be the way the airport is laying, like the train stations and the roads, the airports are fixed in one way, would be better if thay can be turned sideways, some times you got the space one way but not the other

Bjarni · Post by **Bjarni** » 03 Oct 2006 14:28

Firestar wrote:while on the subject of airports, a suggestion would be the way the airport is laying, like the train stations and the roads, the airports are fixed in one way, would be better if thay can be turned sideways, some times you got the space one way but not the other

Agreed, but then we will need more sprites

richk67 · Post by **richk67** » 03 Oct 2006 14:58

We already have all the sprites - I developed them as part of the 6 new airports project. airports.grf actually contains the required 90 deg rotated sprites - landing strips and depot.

The good news is that the most difficult part - the finite state machine - does not need *any* modification to work in the other orientation.

Only 2 things need to be done:
1) translation of the movement table - which could actually be done by calculation.
2) definition of the rotated sprite arrangement.

This is how I created the District airport in its two variations.

brupje · Post by **brupje** » 04 Oct 2006 11:05

Bjarni wrote:it would be a rather big change to the code since airports are actually a somewhat complex system of blocks the planes move around in and where to place them to avoid deadlocks. Making the user design them in the game will not work well with the hardcoded moving we got in the current airports.

if the user is to design te airport, it's really his problem if deadlocks occur, isn't it?

Post by **WWTBAM** » 04 Oct 2006 11:09

but you would also have to have the right length runways so you planes didnt crash

brupje · Post by **brupje** » 04 Oct 2006 11:19

robotboy wrote:but you would also have to have the right length runways so you planes didnt crash

either that or large planes shouldn't be able to land on small runways.

richk67 · Post by **richk67** » 04 Oct 2006 11:23

brupje wrote:if the user is to design te airport, it's really his problem if deadlocks occur, isn't it?

Given how much of a pain PBS were with players moaning that their trains were crashing when they did stupid things (like delete signals in a junction with trains still moving through them), then you can bet custom airports will suffer the same way. A zillion posts "my planes keep crashing on my custom airport". Not worth the hassle.

Having written the state machine for 4 of the current airports, I can guarantee that custom airports will lock up. The intercontinental took about 7-8 hours to write initially, and then a ton of hours to debug all the quirks. Developers will have better things to do than diagnose why someone's custom design is failing.

A faulty custom airport could be a genuine programming bug in the custom airport code, or (more likely) a piece of bad user design. Working out which will take way too much time. But the devs would still have to check just in case it is a bug. So the whole concept would always be high-maintenance.

Aracirion · Post by **Aracirion** » 15 Oct 2006 00:32

what about limited modularity? basically, there would be a few designs which can be customized to suit the player's needs. As most of the structure would be fixed, they should be easier to program. I have tried to make an example (see the attachment):

1) the player places a runway (dark grey) (direction of choice).
2) the player decides on which side the taxiway (light grey) should be.
3) within the red line, the player chooses where the taxiway to terminal should start, and how long that taxiway should be.
4) adjacent to the terminal-taxiway, the player can place parking spaces (yellow).

the hangar should be placed either at the first square of taxiway or adjacent to the terminal taxiway, so that a plane that landed and has no parking space can reach it.

the lenghth of taxiway which isnt needed to reach the terminal/hangar (blue marking in 3) determines how many planes can maximally be allowed to leave their parking space to get to take-off at a time. that ensures the way to terminal/hangar is always free.

the plane which just landed can wait on the first square of taxiway until the way to a parking space/hangar is free.

RiTi · Post by **RiTi** » 18 Oct 2006 08:40

Aracirion wrote:what about limited modularity?

I like this idea very much because in game that's the way railroad stations are already build, it will be a flexibel system to build the airports you want or need and it gives more fun to play because you made it and not the game.

orcaz · Post by **orcaz** » 18 Oct 2006 10:02

This new kind of airport will put more on our creativity.

-More fun for game!

Aracirion · Post by **Aracirion** » 04 Nov 2006 17:05

coming across another post asking for town-owned airports I had this idea which would be made possible by the limited modularity idea above:

- runway is owned by town (and maybe built upon player request, with placing according to his wishes, and requiring him to invest a certain amount of money)

- terminals/parking slots are built and owned (or rented) by players (maybe with an option to rent-out some of your parking space, which again creates the option for also having shared terminals - hopefully, with a new economy 'full load' wouldn't be necessary for planes (wiki), so staying longer than needed could be dealt with (fines / confiscation of plane

) and make deliberately clogging of airports impossible.)

actually, owning parking slots instead of whole airports could even be possible with fixed airport design...

czerty · Post by **czerty** » 08 Nov 2006 16:51

Hmm, I think adding new airports (made by dalesan?) to trunk (0.4.9 or 0.5.0....) not to miniIn (or similiar) can reduce needing for "manual creating" or AP, and this can be done very easily. (and make more time to develop modularity AP

).

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 08 Nov 2006 17:23

czerty wrote:Hmm, I think adding new airports (made by dalesan?)

Um... No.
The new airports are richk67's baby.

richk67 · Post by **richk67** » 08 Nov 2006 17:39

Im a daddy

richk67 · Post by **richk67** » 08 Nov 2006 17:41

czerty wrote:Hmm, I think adding new airports (made by dalesan?) to trunk (0.4.9 or 0.5.0....) not to miniIn (or similiar) can reduce needing for "manual creating" or AP, and this can be done very easily. (and make more time to develop modularity AP ).

4 of the New Airports are in the trunk, and will be in 0.5.0.

SM9T8 · Post by **SM9T8** » 15 Nov 2006 15:06

richk67 wrote:
brupje wrote:if the user is to design te airport, it's really his problem if deadlocks occur, isn't it?
Given how much of a pain PBS were with players moaning that their trains were crashing when they did stupid things (like delete signals in a junction with trains still moving through them), then you can bet custom airports will suffer the same way. A zillion posts "my planes keep crashing on my custom airport". Not worth the hassle.

Thats a bit harsh i had accidents happen when I had been building on the other side of the map and occasionally when i was doing nothing at all!

NukeBuster · Post by **NukeBuster** » 21 Dec 2006 08:02

I was hoping there would be a patch like this around.

The increased flexibility would be a great enhancement.

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