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Tarhun/airships

Tarhunrequested to merge
veloren/dev/veloren:tarhun/airships into master
  • By opening this merge request, you agree to release your code and all other changes under the GPL 3 license and to abide by the terms set by this license.
  • Migrations have been added if applicable (migrations are always necessary for removing/renaming item asset files)
  • Significant changes of this merge request have been added to the changelog.

Airships now travel from dock to dock. The loop is: pick random dock, fly to the site and dock, wait 1 minute and repeat.

I changed this back to draft.

IMO the random destination is interesting but pretty much just a curiosity. I haven't been around long enough to know for sure, but since the airship dock plots were put in, I'm assuming that the desired design direction is that the airships should be a form of public transportation. I see several posts in Discord pointing in that direction.

To be functional as public transport, a player would need to know the destination of any particular airship. I've started working on some ideas to move that along. Just to write them down, here are some thoughts:

In priority order:

  1. Consider Client performance
  • Airship speed affects chunk loading
  • Airship travel altitude should be high enough to eliminate or reduce chunk loading when possible (i.e. long routes)
  1. Airship travel is not 'fast travel'
  • it should supplement and not reduce the motivation to explore the world
  • it should not be 'any' destination chosen by a player
  1. ?

The first priority items are probably tunable and can be influenced by how the airship travels from destination to destination. For example, on long routes, an airship could climb to an altitude further than the default view distance to preclude chunk loading (not sure this is a thing, TBD)

I think airship travel can be public transportation, at no cost, and add an element of exploration on its own.

  • Airships should travel only from dock to dock. No direct routing at players whim.
  • The destination site name should be displayed on the docking platform sign.
  • At any given time, an airship dock can only have a number of destinations equal to the number of docking platforms (currently cities have 2 per airship dock, other sites have 4 per dock).
  • Destinations from any given airship dock should be limited to a specific set of destinations. Too many destinations means players would have to wait too long to get to their target destination, if they have one in mind.
  • Players should be encouraged to explore the network of airship routes.
    • the network should not be displayed on the map
    • the network should be different per world map
    • the network should not change if the server is restarted

I'm working on another version of this branch that incorporates the ideas above.

Edited by Tarhun

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