larger airport and some new features.

bobingabout · Post by **bobingabout** » 17 Jun 2005 15:12

just because its allowed doesn't mean you have to

mkxx · Post by **mkxx** » 17 Jun 2005 15:21

bobingabout wrote:how about allowing more airports to be built in 1 town, and also allow conjoined airports, like conjoining railway/bus/lorry stations/stops

Really? You really want to have 8*16 squares of airport near the town?

But what idea came on my min now: (But it would need to remake the go-to system :( ) Permit to built 2 and more airports in the city (but NOT too near) and define Plane orders like: "Goto 'Prague Airport South' OR (if is full) goto 'Prague Airport Nord' "

LKRaider · Post by **LKRaider** » 17 Jun 2005 17:18

The passengers would get really mad

Unless you offer a free shutter service from one airport to the other, hehe (imagine relatives waiting you for landing in South, but airplane decides do land in North side, lol)

mkxx · Post by **mkxx** » 17 Jun 2005 17:34

LKRaider wrote:imagine relatives waiting you for landing in South, but airplane decides do land in North side, lol

Haha, I know now... It can be only temporary solution. At this time... I am waiting for my relatives only in whole City. (Doesn't matter where, relatives go only to City). But I have read here about the passengers-and-cargo-to-desired-locations-patch. Maybe after this it would be useful. Maybe not.

The main idea of this was to spare some square and don't have terrible airport-fields near the cities...

Dextro · Post by **Dextro** » 17 Jun 2005 17:40

mkxx wrote:
bobingabout wrote:how about allowing more airports to be built in 1 town, and also allow conjoined airports, like conjoining railway/bus/lorry stations/stops
Really? You really want to have 8*16 squares of airport near the town?

But what idea came on my min now: (But it would need to remake the go-to system ) Permit to built 2 and more airports in the city (but NOT too near) and define Plane orders like: "Goto 'Prague Airport South' OR (if is full) goto 'Prague Airport Nord' "

That doesn't happen in reallity

mkxx · Post by **mkxx** » 17 Jun 2005 17:45

@Dextro: You have true. It was crazy idea.
The best thing which i see is to have possibility to have variable airports. (= You can build additional take off/land ways TO the airport)

yasinko · Post by **yasinko** » 20 Jun 2005 00:20

bobingabout wrote:how about allowing more airports to be built in 1 town, and also allow conjoined airports, like conjoining railway/bus/lorry stations/stops

well, more than one airport can be built in one town, but conjoining two airports can be quite problematic. let me explain. if you place the second airport just south/north of the old one there would be no problem but the waste of space. especially, an airport longer than the city limit would be so unrealistic.
if you place it east/west of the airport, the runways would combine, so there would be crashes. (look at the pictures, sorry i don't have a good graphic program, pictures look scrapy)

I think the problem lies there in the runways. If there were more runways than 2 (i.e. 4, 2 for arrivals 2 for departures or 3 for arrivals for departures etc.), there would be no need to build 2 airports. a good, profitable airport with lots of runways would be sufficient imho.

Celestar · Post by **Celestar** » 20 Jun 2005 11:14

I have a four runway airport in the pipeline, unfortunately it is not yet finished, but can have about 3x the capacity of the international one.

Celestar

latinoloco · Post by **latinoloco** » 20 Jun 2005 11:27

oh u beast... mind giving us a screenie?

yasinko.. thats some dodgy looking airports....

Arsenal · Post by **Arsenal** » 20 Jun 2005 12:54

Celestar wrote:I have a four runway airport in the pipeline, unfortunately it is not yet finished, but can have about 3x the capacity of the international one.

Celestar

I don't think the capacity is the problem, it's the turnaround, though having 4 runways should be better.

Jango · Post by **Jango** » 20 Jun 2005 12:55

CobraA1 wrote:
IMO, instead of making 'ready-to-use' airport models, there should be way to build my own airport in the shape that better suits my needs, just like it is with stations. Of course, I understand it takes lots of code
I agree, that would be very good .

A lot of code, yes, but IMHO worth every line.

My patch does help, but unfortunately, it cannot make the airports handle more aircraft, that is unfortunately a limitation of the number of runways and the the poor design of the taxiways. Even the taxiways of the International airport are not that great.

I did some work a while back in an attempt to model a generic airport structure.

You need building blocks including:
1) runway sections
2) taxiway sections
3) hangars
4) terminal buildings with aircraft spaces
5) extraneous buildings for decoration

You need logic:
1) path-finding between different blocks
2) dead-locking resistant simultaneous plane movement
3) validity of airport

Now, i reckon it's possible. My Java mockup worked, and I was able to simulate scores of planes landing and taking off on multi (i tested upto 4 runways) runway and terminal configurations.

In the past, some of the developers weren't so keen on pushing this avenue, mainly because this kind of airport could be quite tricky to build from a newbie user's point of view. My personal view is that most of our users actually know what they are doing and would prefer complicated features which cause them to think (such as PBS) in order that the extra drop of cash can be squeezed from their networks.

Unfortunately, I have no time, so I won't be able to develop this kind of thing for a while, but I reckon it could be done...

mega rail · Post by **mega rail** » 20 Jun 2005 16:57

if newbies find it to hard to make custom airports...we could always keep the existing pre built ones.

bobingabout · Post by **bobingabout** » 20 Jun 2005 21:11

good idea, have costom buildable airports as an option, but keep the existing "Prebuilt" ones too.

also, another idea, add an airport design editor, simular to the scenario editor. create an airport, and save it in an airports folder, then load a game, and select an airport from a drop down list and build it. however, the ability to build costomised airports while ingame would also be a nice feature.

Jango · Post by **Jango** » 20 Jun 2005 21:54

...and it would take a while to write.

latinoloco · Post by **latinoloco** » 21 Jun 2005 05:15

How about just selecting a piece of land for airport. Then you can build wat ever the fudge that you want. If you dont want a depot, then dont build one. But you NEED to have a control tower, and at least 1 run way.
dont even need a loading bay. You can make a airport in the middle of the way like in an ocean, a pit stop. so they land, service, and take off again. this would be freaken sick.

but there has to be a limit on airport size... like 30x30

For the run ways, you can choose 3 types. 2 way. 1 way land. and 1 way take off. and they can be directional. so u can turn them. So if i wish to having one loading bay, and 4 run ways, i can. but if i want 6 loading bays and 2 runways, i can do that too. depends on how much land ive bought.

do understand what im trying to say cause im not sure that makes entire sense of what im trying to say

CobraA1 · Post by **CobraA1** » 21 Jun 2005 05:53

Really? You really want to have 8*16 squares of airport near the town?

If I so desire, Yup

.

I don't think the capacity is the problem, it's the turnaround, though having 4 runways should be better.

One of the primary bottlenecks right now is waiting for an aircraft to finish landing and get off the runway. The whole sequence that has to be done before another plane can land is currently very long.

Adding more runways will allow planes to continue to land while others are in the landing sequence, so it should help things.

I do request that each runway in future version(s) of the airport should have a nearby taxiway that can hold several aircraft without blocking. The International airport is currently easily blocked by aircraft entering/leaving the depot next to the landing runway.

Now, i reckon it's possible. My Java mockup worked, and I was able to simulate scores of planes landing and taking off on multi (i tested upto 4 runways) runway and terminal configurations.

I'm very interested! How well does the Java mockup work? Would it be possible to get the code?

mega rail · Post by **mega rail** » 21 Jun 2005 06:36

need more tan 3 runway types.
you need short grass runways for the early game sa well.
heil pads are also needed

Jango · Post by **Jango** » 21 Jun 2005 08:54

CobraA1 wrote: I'm very interested! How well does the Java mockup work? Would it be possible to get the code?

Well, first thing to understand is that visually it does not look like OpenTTD

- it's just a grid of squares coloured differently to distinguish the different types of building block.

Actually it works very well. At first I designed it so that if there was a loop, only one aeroplane could be in the looped section at any given time. This is to prevent deadlocks. When this was fully working, I improved the algorithms so that planes "book" paths through the airport before moving. This meant that planes could simultaneously travel through the airport grid in potentially different directions without causing deadlocks.

Then I improved it further and made it so that planes could book paths through the looped sections but otherwise they just queued. And the final adjustment I made was to allow planes to free up squares they'd travelled through on their path, which enables other planes to book their routes immediately.

There could be potential improvements, but I think at this point they gave me some work to do at my job.

One final thing. It wouldn't be possible to directly translate the Java code to C. The reason I did it in Java was so that I could use threads (i.e. one for each plane), and whilst I understand that threads in C are possible, I know how to do it in Java. Being more interested in getting a working concept, I just did it in the language I know best. OpenTTD works largely on state machines, and thus, you'd have to create dynamic state machines.

Jango · Post by **Jango** » 21 Jun 2005 09:00

latinoloco wrote: For the run ways, you can choose 3 types. 2 way. 1 way land. and 1 way take off. and they can be directional. so u can turn them. So if i wish to having one loading bay, and 4 run ways, i can. but if i want 6 loading bays and 2 runways, i can do that too. depends on how much land ive bought.

Well, this is partly what I envisage. I think you'd have to have certain criteria filled to have a working airport. I suspect that they'd include having at least one of the following: runway, loading bay/terminal, control tower(no functional use), and hangar.

You would be able to have those 3 types of runway, but not directional. There's no need to have planes taking off/landing in different directions to the present and allowing them to do so would present further difficulties which could be avoided.

Of course there should be maximum airport sizes, but part of the advantage of the (very much proposed, but not planned) dynamic airport system would be that it wouldn't have to be rectangular in size. There's no reason why it couldn't be irregular.

Virtuall1024 · Post by **Virtuall1024** » 21 Jun 2005 09:50

latinoloco wrote:How about just selecting a piece of land for airport. Then you can build wat ever the fudge that you want. If you dont want a depot, then dont build one. But you NEED to have a control tower, and at least 1 run way.
dont even need a loading bay.

a great idea... seems to me that the hardest part is connecting all of those. or maybe let the planes move over a road? (yes, unrealistic, but much easier to do). Btw, I heard someone mentioning bus stops inside airports a while ago...

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