Just chucking out some POI ideas

[zztong]

Hm. After looking at the aircraft again for the first time in a while (3.0 breaks his plane prefabs in many ways, sadly), I think I'd actually have to downgrade my opinion to needing more parts to make nice looking aircraft.

I agree with this. In a game like Empyrion Galactic Survival, they had to add a variety of wing blocks, engines, and cockpit blocks before they could have reasonably-decent looking smaller ships. And, if you want to be able to enter the airplane, then you're probably going to want blocks for 1, 2, and 3 seats; overhead bins; lavatory, galley, cabin entry doors, and over-wing emergency exits. The reason being is that those things are rather compact and if you try to make a lavatory that can hold a zombie and fit with the rest of the plane, you would end up with something like a 5-block (meter) bathroom.

If you wanted to make a 747 out of blocks, you might get a reasonable size, but why would a 747 being landing in Navezgane? Those would land at Phoenix.

You might make a C-130 to go with a dirt runway near a hastily assembled military encampment. That would make some sense to me.

I think the biggest would be a regional jet with less than 100 passengers. So, 2 seats per side. You get a single aisle for players and zombies to move. You can hide a zombie in the cockpit and another in the bathroom, otherwise they're laying in the aisle.

But if you want a small private airport, then you need some small airplanes in the same category as the current 4x4 and cars. That is, salvage.

 

[Riamus]

As for the tiles, I wonder if it would be possible to make a single oversized tile as a remedy instead? Or if there are other means to force face locking the way POIs use gateways to anchor themselves to tiles.

You're limited by the engine (or game design). Anything over 150x150 starts to have problems, whether as tile or POI. There are people making larger POI, but using them requires players to be willing to accept the problems associated with those and that's not something that would be okay for vanilla.

As far as controlling rotation, there isn't any specific way to do with with RWG right now. That's something that would be very helpful if they added. There are a number of ways they can improve RWG to allow for such control, but I don't think that will ever be a high priority for them.

 

[FramFramson]

I agree with this. In a game like Empyrion Galactic Survival, they had to add a variety of wing blocks, engines, and cockpit blocks before they could have reasonably-decent looking smaller ships. And, if you want to be able to enter the airplane, then you're probably going to want blocks for 1, 2, and 3 seats; overhead bins; lavatory, galley, cabin entry doors, and over-wing emergency exits. The reason being is that those things are rather compact and if you try to make a lavatory that can hold a zombie and fit with the rest of the plane, you would end up with something like a 5-block (meter) bathroom.

If you wanted to make a 747 out of blocks, you might get a reasonable size, but why would a 747 being landing in Navezgane? Those would land at Phoenix.

You might make a C-130 to go with a dirt runway near a hastily assembled military encampment. That would make some sense to me.

I think the biggest would be a regional jet with less than 100 passengers. So, 2 seats per side. You get a single aisle for players and zombies to move. You can hide a zombie in the cockpit and another in the bathroom, otherwise they're laying in the aisle.

But if you want a small private airport, then you need some small airplanes in the same category as the current 4x4 and cars. That is, salvage.

Fluffy did something very clever in using porta-potties for lavatories in his planes.

I don't think you can do huge jets either. Fuselages made of 7m rounds get you either 4 seats or 6 (more on that in the new thread later), and 5m round gets you small commuter jets or a private jet, which are more than enough for 7D.

 

[Riamus]

Fluffy did something very clever in using porta-potties for lavatories in his planes.

I don't think you can do huge jets either. Fuselages made of 7m rounds get you either 4 seats or 6 (more on that in the new thread later), and 5m round gets you small commuter jets or a private jet, which are more than enough for 7D.

The way the overheads were made was also clever. Anyhow, I wasn't saying the planes were perfect. Only that if you accept that there aren't specific plane parts and that this is a voxel game, those planes are really well done. At least in my opinion. Obviously if TFP made an airport, they'd most likely create plane parts so they could make them look more realistic, which would absolutely help any other plane and airport mods. That would be great. I'm not too hopeful that they'll ever do that, which is why I am willing to accept what I feel is a great use of blocks to make believable planes based on what's available in the game.

 

[zztong]

There is an airplane model in the game. I only ever see it when the lunatic decides to drop a mostly empty crate of survival supplies. I'm happy he's thinking of us, but entire crate of MREs would make more sense than a stone shovel, two jars of yucca juice, five lockpicks, and a magazine. I sometimes think there are other survivors on that plane that are saying "So long, sucker. We found a way out of Navezgane. We're going to Disney! Have some of my backpack."

Err, what I mean is, if that were a placeable and salvagable block I wonder how big it will be. I've never seen it up close.

 

[FramFramson]

There is an airplane model in the game. I only ever see it when the lunatic decides to drop a mostly empty crate of survival supplies. I'm happy he's thinking of us, but entire crate of MREs would make more sense than a stone shovel, two jars of yucca juice, five lockpicks, and a magazine. I sometimes think there are other survivors on that plane that are saying "So long, sucker. We found a way out of Navezgane. We're going to Disney! Have some of my backpack."

Err, what I mean is, if that were a placeable and salvagable block I wonder how big it will be. I've never seen it up close.

There's a mod which adds a bunch of flyable airplanes, and it included that model for ■■■■s and giggles. As you might guess, it's comically low-res.

Aircrafts for 7 Days to Die

Adds a variety of aircrafts for 7 days to die with now improved sounds and some new models and icons.

7daystodiemods.com

One of the images is a screenshot of the plane (it's a C46, which... how are any of those even still flying in 203x? Obviously it was just a cheap model grabbed and never replaced, so I'm nitpicking). In the video, it's the first plane he shows.

 

[OPR357]

An airport POI does not have to be an LAX or JFK, just a small town airfield. The damaged tower and buildings would be the main POI and can be in the Wasteland. The runway can be a standard roadway and doesn't have to be part of the POI itself. Outbuildings such as communications, utility and guard shack can be a separate POI set along side of the roadway.

 

[zztong]

The runway can be a standard roadway and doesn't have to be part of the POI itself.

If you want the road to be straight; devoid of trees and cars; and connected to the tower and hangers in a meaningful way, you're going to put the runway in the POI.

 

[Jost Amman]

Replying to the first post ideas:

Add a Luna Park, specifically with a Mirror Maze.

 

[Riamus]

An airport POI does not have to be an LAX or JFK, just a small town airfield. The damaged tower and buildings would be the main POI and can be in the Wasteland. The runway can be a standard roadway and doesn't have to be part of the POI itself. Outbuildings such as communications, utility and guard shack can be a separate POI set along side of the roadway.

Even the shortest runway in the world is longer than a single POI can be. The shortest is 400m (blocks). A vanilla POI is not larger than 100m. A tile is 150m. You would need a minimum of 3 side by side tiles for even the smallest airport. RWG doesn't create tile layouts except for towns and although you can make a fake town that is used for an airport, there is not any way to control tile rotations beyond just the road layout on the tiles. That makes it very challenging to get a valid layout using RWG. RWG also does not have any way to force a POI to be placed next to a straight section of road. It *can* happen, but it's random. The POI could get placed next to a straight section or a curved section or a section that is going through a mountain. There isn't any way to control that.

There also isn't an option to place POI next to one another except if they are on a tile. And, again, tile rotations aren't something you have direct control over. If you made a single "town" of only 2 tiles, both of which are caps, you could make a runway that's 300m, which could be at least somewhat believable. However, that's pretty much the limit. You can also make something where the runway looks like it's buried or destroyed, but you also run into the problem of placement. If RWG happens to place it so the buried/destroyed runway is pointing right at a hill or mountain or river or lake or town, it would be very clear that it wasn't ever a runway. So yes, you can sometimes get something that looks right with RWG, but you're more likely to get something that doesn't look right.

Your options are to place the airport on the map by hand, which is obviously possible, but requires work to do so. Or you can create a "group POI" for Teragon (AH64_Jimbo's airport mod has that) and then it's easy to drop the entire airport onto the map anywhere that there is room for it in Teragon. But there's currently no good options in RWG to place airports that have runways. You can make heliports easily enough. You could make a gyrocopter "airport" with a really short runway (something you might see at some hobbyist's house in real life) since those don't require as much space to land or take off (most need only 60-120m to take off and less to land). But an airport just doesn't look right with a very short runway.

Btw, the longest runway at JFK is 4425m (blocks), so if you look at other threads related to airports in the past week where we were talking about runway lengths, we weren't talking at all about something the size of JFK or LAX, but instead very small regional airports that have short runways... that are still around 1600-1800m (blocks).

 

[bdubyah]

Not sure why everyone is so hung up on airports all of sudden. Lol. That said, I don't know why the hangup is on runway length. The gyro in game takes off in like 20 blocks. There's no need for an airport POI in game to have 2km runways. It could be a small couple of single plane hangars with a decent patch of runway out front that deteriorates into grass/sand/whatever at both ends. Done.

 

[Riamus]

Not sure why everyone is so hung up on airports all of sudden. Lol. That said, I don't know why the hangup is on runway length. The gyro in game takes off in like 20 blocks. There's no need for an airport POI in game to have 2km runways. It could be a small couple of single plane hangars with a decent patch of runway out front that deteriorates into grass/sand/whatever at both ends. Done.

The smallest runway in the world for planes is 400m. Yes, gyros need normally only 60-120m to take off and even less to land. But if you have an airport, it would be a real airport and not something for a gyrocopter unless you design something that someone just made after the apocalypse that was designed for a gyrocopter and that really wouldn't look anything like a real airport anyhow. No terminal. No luggage area. Just a short runway and maybe a hangar and tiny parking area. That would look fine... and be a tier 0 because there wouldn't be anything worth doing there.

I also pointed out the problem with making a runway look buried or destroyed when using RWG.

Btw, a quick search shows that even an old style biplane needed 300-500m of runway. So although it could land in under that 400m that the shortest runway is, it still needed at least 2 tiles of runway. And that's an old biplane.

 

[bdubyah]

Small airports are pretty much just hangars and a runway or two, right? No terminal or anything like that needed. Maybe a small radio tower or something. Not sure why it has to be 100% realistic, it's a zombie game after all.

And not sure what you mean about the problems. I'm talking about either one 100x100 POI or just using an entire tile for it. That's it. Not trying to connect tiles or whatever. Make it a wilderness 100x100 POI and the runway can fade out to the edge of the POI. That's good enough to me.

 

[OPR357]

Small airports are pretty much just hangars and a runway or two, right? No terminal or anything like that needed. Maybe a small radio tower or something. Not sure why it has to be 100% realistic, it's a zombie game after all.

And not sure what you mean about the problems. I'm talking about either one 100x100 POI or just using an entire tile for it. That's it. Not trying to connect tiles or whatever. Make it a wilderness 100x100 POI and the runway can fade out to the edge of the POI. That's good enough to me.

I agree.

 

[Riamus]

Small airports are pretty much just hangars and a runway or two, right? No terminal or anything like that needed. Maybe a small radio tower or something. Not sure why it has to be 100% realistic, it's a zombie game after all.

Yes, as I pointed out as well. But a hangar and runway is only going to be a tier 0 or maybe a tier 1 if you pack the hangar. If you went really crazy, maybe a tier 2. But a single building that would be mainly and open area and perhaps an office and bathroom plus an open field/runway isn't exactly interesting. Yes, it can be done, as I had said. That doesn't make it really worth it.

And not sure what you mean about the problems. I'm talking about either one 100x100 POI or just using an entire tile for it. That's it. Not trying to connect tiles or whatever. Make it a wilderness 100x100 POI and the runway can fade out to the edge of the POI. That's good enough to me.

A single 100x100 POI or 150x150 tile isn't half the size needed for a runway that looks at all long enough. Even if you ignore realism, a runway the length of a tile doesn't look long enough in the game... at least not if you've seen airports (including the very small regional ones. And I pointed out the problems with "fading" the runway out (destroyed/buried). If it gets placed in a good location, it can look fine. If not (things are placed randomly in RWG, after all), then it can look wrong quite often as I pointed out earlier.

From what I've seen, TFP works to make really nice POI. They don't tend to just cut corners and make low quality POI. And I don't expect them to make any airport unless they also make individual plane blocks (like cars) or enough new blocks to make a decent looking plane out of blocks. If they put in the work for that, they are likely (my guess) to want to make an airport that looks like it should rather than cheating one. A mod can cheat an airport all they want and it doesn't have to look that good or realistic. I don't think TFP would go that route. Sure, they could... but I don't think they would want to. They don't generally do low quality POI.

*IF* TFP ever decides to add an airport POI to the game, my expectation (again, a guess) is that they will do all of the following:

• Create individual airplane blocks OR create the necessary blocks to make decent looking airplanes out of blocks.
• Update RWG to handle placement of airports that have long enough runways. After all, that is relatively easy to add, depending how they want it to work. If they wanted to make an airport (or multiple) that are 1 tile wide and X tiles long, it only requires a special "town" type that will be only straights and will maintain the same rotation the entire length. That's really all that is needed for a 1-tile wide airport, which is plenty for a small airport. If they want to have it wider, that would require more changes to RWG, but is also quite possible.
• Create one or more airports that can be placed by the updated RWG and are of good quality, with runways that are long enough. At the very least, 2 tiles long, but preferably a minimum of 3 tiles.

I don't think they'd do airports without doing all 3 of those things. And if they update RWG to handle airports, the whole discussion about runway length won't matter because they'd be able to place full-sized runways (or at least decently long ones).

 

[bdubyah]

I'm not sure why you seem to think it would have to be a T5 worthy POI to be made. A smaller one would do just fine as a T1-2. Just because you wouldn't find it interesting doesn't mean everyone else wouldn't. A POI doesn't have to be a T5 to be "nice". While what you described would make for a good T5 POI, that isn't the only way to do it.

 

[Riamus]

I'm not sure why you seem to think it would have to be a T5 worthy POI to be made. A smaller one would do just fine as a T1-2. Just because you wouldn't find it interesting doesn't mean everyone else wouldn't. A POI doesn't have to be a T5 to be "nice". While what you described would make for a good T5 POI, that isn't the only way to do it.

I never said T5. But look even at most T1 POI that TFP has made... they are a decent number of rooms. A hangar, as I said, is mostly an open space with perhaps an office and bathroom (maybe). If there's a tower (the smallest of airports normally wouldn't have one), we have plenty of those in other POI and you get 1 or 2 zombies there and that's it. What is there to do besides go kill zombies in an open space? Nowhere to go. Nowhere to look. Just run around a mostly empty tile. I don't think TFP should make such an airport. Mods (POI packs or individual custom POI) can. TFP should make something that is decent. If you think having a cheaply made airport is something TFP should do, then that's fine. I don't.

If they decided to make such a tiny airport, then I'd rather they just made a "homemade" gyrocopter "airport" that was made after the apocalypse. At least that would look okay. And then they don't even need to make airplanes. Just drop a gyro or two there and it's done.

 

[zztong]

Make it a wilderness 100x100 POI and the runway can fade out to the edge of the POI. That's good enough to me.

I'm looking forward to seeing your creation.

 

[OPR357]

I like the nuclear power plant idea.

A nuclear power plant would be a great addition

 

[FramFramson]

Hm, one idea: The diagonal on a tile would net a road over 200m in length.

I know that's extra stubby, but honestly the game's scale is such that really huge things IRL don't actually work in-game.

I mean, maps are a theoretical max size of 16 km² and a useful maximum of 10 km², with most smaller than either, never mind a height limit of only 250~ m; vehicles travel much slower in game than they do IRL out of necessity. Even a 1.6m km runway is hilariously excessive by the game's scale, let alone 4km. 200m would probably be okay for verisimilitude of a small local one and a 500m runway would probably feel like JFK in-game for most players.