[WIP]Hot air balloons #37935
[WIP]Hot air balloons #37935
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What is the idea behind dropping the Blackhawk spawn chance from 33% to 5% in military bases? Also, as an idea, air drop crates could come with a parachute that can be salvaged to get fabric for crafting the balloons. |
The military base had a 33% chance to spawn blackhawk wrecks, but in the helicopter PR there are now multiple versions of wrecks, some mostly intact and with working rotors, so the military base was an ideal spot to have a low chance to get a working military helicopter. 33% chance to spawn a mostly useless wreck is one thing, and that was the case before. but 33% chance to spawn something very useful, now, is too high. |
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That entry was a placeholder for a working helicopter. I would imagine that a military base would be a prime candidate for salvaging working helicopters. If it is about balance, then it may be worth considering having a chance for spawning a wreck or a working helicopter instead of having a 5% chance of having anything on the helipad at all. |
There are 2,135 Black Hawk helicopters in service throughout the entire US , 800 Apaches. There are 11,000 civilian helicopters in total in the US, and 6,131 military helicopters in service, in total, in the US. This is surprisingly low, and would make it very rare for one to appear, let alone mostly intact, in a region of New England. @kevingranade did some calculations on this previously for the helicopter PR, I'll defer to him if he thinks this is too low, but as it stands, I think even a higher chance to spawn wrecks would be pushing it. |
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<Enhancement / Feature>
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That makes sense. |
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A thought: Could balloons be used to add buoyancy to boats? I'd imagine they could behave like inefficient sails that add more lift than drag. |
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The amount of lift a balloon would provide to a boat hull would be pretty negligible |
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Rebased, cleaned up, edited how burners work slightly, to make more sense. tested, works. |
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Out of scope for this PR, but maybe a feature for later: Once we have ways of adding turbines/rotors to a vehicle, it'd be cool to have some sort of system to determine aerodynamic lift. Such a feature could be accompanied by airplane wings, glider parts, and such. This would hopefully enable construction of working planes and gliders. |
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Getting a crash on saving, something to do with the display code.. will investigate. |
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Ah it was becuase my testworld had z-levels turned off, helicopters forbid flying with z-levels turned off, but balloons didnt, ive fixed that now. Its probably possible to get it working somehow with z-levels turned off, in soem weird way, but for the moment it causes crashes, so ive forbidden it. consider this ready now. |
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@davidpwbrown Anything I can do to help test? Very excited to see your work hit experimental. :) |
Pull it locally, build, play around with it, report bugs :) |
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akshuallyyyy some more bugs just found. |
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Some notes:
I seem to be unable to descend to z level 0. Descending from z level 4 to 1 works (and ascending), but descending below z level 1 does not appear to.
When you set a burner to a z level with giving it any fuel, it sinks through the floor.
I if I give it fuel, I can then ascend through the floor. While certainly an interesting experience, this doesn't seem very intended.
Setting up and tearing down the envelope could probably use a bit more attention:
In my experience, when not on a groomed field, you almost always use a tarp under the balloon when you're setting it up/taking it down (and even sometimes on a groomed field). I'm not sure how much of this is wanting to keep the balloon clean versus wanting to keep the balloon intact, but it's probably a good idea.
You should require a large open space to set up the balloon.
Inflating the balloon should require some tools.
Generally, inflation is in two stages:
Cold inflation, where you open up the neck of the envelope and blow cold air into it with a fan.
Then hot inflation, where the balloon is full of air, and then you use the burner to warn the arm up, which gets it off the ground and over the balloon. At this point you need something putting weight on the balloon, or it will ascend.
Obviously, hot air balloons existed before powered fans, so there's some way to inflate it without one, but I'm sure it would be very slow.
Set up/teardown times might be a bit short, but I'm not sure how long it takes without multiple people.
Personally, I think that the burner you have here should be called a makeshift burner, and in the future a proper burner could be added with propane, instead these fuels.
| bool vehicle::is_burner_fuel( itype_id fuel ) const | ||
| { | ||
| if( fuel == "gasoline" || fuel == "diesel" || fuel == "lamp_oil" || fuel == "jp8" || | ||
| fuel == "motor_oil" || fuel == "avgas" ) { |
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This should be in JSON.
…d generalising those functions and removing misbehaving altitude clamp
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The ascending/descending stuff is fixed, will look into the setup/jsonisation next. |
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Feel free to reopen when you come back. |
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@I-am-Erk I can't add this to the "PRs we want Project", but I think this would go there? |
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How can I support this? I know C++ and am familiar with the jsons |
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Just open a new PR and copy the code from here (preserving the authorship). |
Summary
SUMMARY: Features "Hot air balloons"Purpose of change
This relies on #33829
And therefore has the same changes from it.
Adds flyable hot air balloons
Describe the solution
Purely craftable, not found in the world ( though i suppose a rare map extra for a crashed balloon might make sense )
Craft a balloon from synthetic fabric, a lot of it ( where do you get all that synthetic fabric from? I dunno, might be hard! )
Craft a simple burner to expel hot air.
Attach the balloon to a boardable frame/aisle/seat ( only 1 balloon per vehicle, so far )
A calculation is done for the lift of the balloon, depending on air pressure, humidity, temperature and so on, if it can lift more than it weighs, then it can fly, in much the same way that bricks don't
You operate the controls and set a desired z-level altitude, after some time ( and some burner fuel being used ) it will climb or fall to that z-level.
It will also be pushed along by the wind - unattended by the player, so the player can sit and read a book whilst drifting across the world.
If the envelope gets damaged, its lift decreases.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Theres some kludges here ( you wont be shocked to hear that on my PRs )
The burner can't be an engine, I tried, but engines are assumed to do so many things that a burner dosnt, that it was just too weird to fit that square peg into that round hole, so it consumes burner fuel manually, when operated via the vehicle use menu.
Landing is nice and easy, when in reality it could be rougher.
A balloon envelope is not an easy thing to move around, but we dont have multi-tile items or vehicle parts yet , so it is what it is.
Currently, if the lift is just below enough for its weight, then it stops being able to fly and drops much the same way that bricks do, in reality climb rate and descent rate would be gradual or fast depending on how far over or under its required lift it is, I can look into this later.
Lots of other little stuff, polishing, interactions with othre vehicle mechanics, and a thousand and one oddities ill need to look into, as per the helicopter stuff.
Also, like helicopters, its slow, performance-wise, so yaknow, probably wouldnt be much good as a mobile base.
Testing
Lots of flying around and climbing and falling and jumping out of moving balloons, and then spawning a stepladder and climbing back up onto it, and shooting my own balloon while flying, reading a comic book in a strong gale at z-level 10 etc .
Additional context
Gif of flying about.
https://gfycat.com/verifiablewaterygosling
Gif of after I jumped out of it, and you can see it sshadow moving across the ground as it flies away from me :(
https://gfycat.com/idealrectangularkinglet