I've been able to do in OpenTTD what I've wanted to do in TTDPatch for a long time - aircraft queueing! A year ago, I was very bothered by broken/slower aircraft being taken over by faster aircraft, and never getting a chance to land. Ever. They'd just go around all day, while faster aircraft took over the runway.
This also uses Benben's planespeed patch, allowing the user to adjust aircraft speeds, since many people think planes going slower than trains is ridiculous.
Both the patches are together because the queueing patch adjusts some of the same lines as the planespeed patch, causing conflicts if they were to be seperated. Also, the higher plane speeds are beneficial to the queueing patch, allowing it to clear the queue faster.
The current "features" of the patch:
-Aircraft queueing, solves eternally circling aircraft problem.
-Better placed and shorter aircraft loop, allowing the queue to be cleared faster (less time in the air after an aircraft leaves the runway), and is also more visually appealing IMHO. This is a permanent change, and cannot be turned off, because of how the airport state machine works. (not finished, not in current patch)
-Aircraft further back in the queue wait at higher altitudes, which prevents aircraft from bunching up, and from flying through each other.
-Aircraft slow down when the destination airport is busy to slow down filling of the queue (and speed up a little when they're one of last two in queue, so it can be cleared faster).
-Helicopters line up in their own queue. Relatively simple compared to aircraft queueing, since helicopters can stand still
.-Modified form of BenBen's planespeed patch.
-Descent added between queue and landing.
Internal changes not visible to the user:
-New queue type designed specifically for holding vehicles, includes features:
--Very fast operations for almost everything (usual case for most operations is O(1), worst case O(n)), despite availablility of mid-queue deletions and the ability to get a vehicle's position in the queue.
--Vecicles can be deleted from middle of queue (the primary reason for creating a new queue type - they *must* be able to do this, because the owner may do something like redirect the aircraft to a new airport)
--Vehicles know their position in the queue - used internally for making decisions and in that nice stacking effect
.--In addition to the queue knowing which vehicle it contains, vehicles know which queue they belong to.
--Vehicle type is non-specific - queue can be made to hold trains & road vehicles as well as aircraft. But it must be a vehicle.
-Several datatypes had to have their size increased in order to overcome limits.
--Planespeed required new code to allow aircraft to move faster than one unit at a time.
--Plane heights also required changes.
NOTE: The patch is based off of the 19 September 2007 SVN - r11127.
The patch has now been submitted to FlySpray.
Current version changes the savegames - savegames made with my patch will not work with non-patched versions of OpenTTD!
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